


there’ll be happiness after you

by vanessadingles



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Vanity reunion, F/F, Mental Health Issues, Recovery, So many tropes, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-19 04:13:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29744802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanessadingles/pseuds/vanessadingles
Summary: Charity moves in with Diane and learns to ask for help.aka, the mental health storyline that Emmerdale isn’t giving us.
Relationships: Charity Dingle/Vanessa Woodfield
Comments: 20
Kudos: 85





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This starts just after Charity moves in with Diane, and completely ignores everything happening in canon. I borrowed the title from a Taylor Swift song 
> 
> Charity has suicidal thoughts in this chapter, and she makes (vague) plans she doesn’t go through on - please be careful if this could be triggering to you

_February 2021_

Charity kept her footsteps light as she walked the still unfamiliar corridor from Diane’s guest bedroom to the kitchen. She’d decided to get herself a drink of water when she’d checked her phone for the tenth time that night and was still no closer to getting to sleep.

Flicking on the light switch as she entered the kitchen, she opened the cupboard that contained the few meagre items Charity had taken with her: a few bags of Noah’s favourite crisps that Vanessa never forgot to put on their shopping list, a boxed cake mix that she bought when she still thought Moses was coming home, a nice bottle of wine she planned to give as a gift to Diane, and a cheap bottle of gin for herself.

She took the gin almost on auto-pilot: alcohol always has let her switch off her brain and sleep better than anything else, there was no point in pretending otherwise. _Except for Vanessa_ , her traitorous brain reminded her. It used to feel like her fiancée had a sixth sense for when Charity struggled to sleep and Vanessa would hold her until Charity finally felt so calm and loved and safe that she could drop off to sleep.

The thoughts of Vanessa and the life Charity knew she’d never have again made her pour a generous measure of gin into a mug and take a long drink of it, topping it back up before she made her way to the sofa.

The gin was strong and tasted rough, nothing like the fancier bottles she used to choose when she was with Vanessa and they’d have a drink together on an evening. _It’s what I deserve,_ Charity thinks to herself, _I don’t deserve any better._

Charity’s thoughts became more and more self loathing as she recalls the words thrown at her by Noah and Debbie and Sarah. She knew she deserved their anger but hearing her own flesh and blood tell her that they didn’t want her around and she’d be better off dead had broken her spirit even further. She had nothing left to fight for anymore. 

Maybe she would be better off dead and then she wouldn’t have to let her family down anymore and she wouldn’t have to see the hatred or disappointment in her eyes again. Moses and Johnny would be too small to be affected really, and if she does it now she doesn’t need to ruin their lives like she has done with her older children. Noah had always preferred the rest of the family to her and she knew they’d look after him. Her death would surely be a relief for Debbie, who she’s let down more times than she could even count. She wonders how Ryan would feel: it probably wouldn’t be a surprise, not when he’s heard every last detail of how he came to be.

She frowned as she drank the last of her gin, standing up to go retrieve the bottle and pour herself another generous measure, downed it, and then drank another.

She pulled her phone out of her dressing gown pocket and stared at her lock screen. It was a picture of Moses, grinning widely at the camera with crumbs of chocolate cake all over his face from his last birthday. He’d been so happy then and she liked knowing she was the cause of that but then she also knew she’d caused far more hurt than anything else. The odd occasion where she actually got it right wasn’t enough.

Thinking of Moses makes her think of Johnny and she swigs the gin straight from the bottle this time. She can’t think of Johnny and the way Tracy had taken him away without even giving her a chance to say goodbye. That makes it five out of five children she’s had taken away from her and it’s nearly always been due to her own stupidity.

It seems like more proof that her family is right and she should do them all a favour by ending it all. That way she doesn’t need to hurt like this anymore and she can’t hurt them anymore. 

She took another drink of gin and rustles in her handbag, looking for a pen and paper.

~~Debbie,~~

No, she shouldn’t send it to Debbie.

~~Cain,~~

~~I’m sure you’ll probably jump with joy reading this, so at least I’ve made one last person happy.~~

No, that wasn’t right either.

_Vanessa,_

_I’m sorry for everything I’ve done that’s hurt you. Thank you for loving me. I’ve never been happier than when we were together._

_If you’d do me one last favour, tell my children I love them and I’m sorry and it’s not their fault. I’m doing this for them, so I don’t hurt them again._

_I hope one day you might not hate me anymore. I hope Johnny knows I loved him._

_Please be happy._

_Goodbye,_

_Charity_.

She thinks she could have written something better, but it’ll do. She’s sure she has a stamp in her bag and she searches for the painkillers she usually has in there as well. Hopefully there’ll be enough.

There’s an envelope and she scrawls Vanessa’s name and Vanessa’s mum’s address across it. She finds a second class stamp and sticks it in the top right hand corner.

Her hands close around the thin cardboard box and curses when she notices there’s just three paracetamol left it it. That won’t do anything. She can’t find anything in Diane’s kitchen cupboards or in the bathroom. Her family will have to put up with her for another day. Someone else, maybe some religious, would probably say it’s some kind of sign but Charity sees it as yet another failure. She can’t even kill herself right.

She poured more gin, instead. It wouldn’t do much, but it’d help her forget for now. She grimaces when she realises the bottle is empty, now.

Charity startles awake when there’s a gentle shake of her shoulder and Diane’s voice telling her to get up. She’s completely disorientated for a minute and then realises she must have fallen asleep downstairs.

“Water. And painkillers. It looks like you need them.” Diane pointed to the table. Charity gulps down the water and doesn’t look at the painkillers. She isn’t sure how she feels about last night. “ I have to get to the B&B and sort a few things out there but when I’m back, we need to talk.”

“Thanks Diane. I couldn’t sleep last night, I came down to get some water and I must have fallen asleep.

It’s such an obvious lie that Charity is annoyed at herself. The empty bottle of gin is on the table, Diane couldn’t possibly have missed it. The letter to Vanessa is there too, but still in its envelope. She hopes Diane hasn’t read it.

She risks a glance at Diane’s face and she was met with a sympathetic look and Charity wished it was anger instead: she knew anger, she understood it. Sympathy was harder to deal with and it wasn’t usually genuine.

“See you later, pet. I’ll bring us some lunch home from the B&B, there’s usually stuff going spare.”

“Let me know if you need anything! I could help out with the B&B or do some cleaning or tidying here, if you’d like.” There. Offering to help had to count for something, Charity figured. One point in her favour before Diane says she needs to leave later. Why else would she be saying they need to talk? The offer of lunch was probably just to soothe Diane’s own conscience about it.

“Well, I’d never turn someone down when they’re offering to do housework for me,” Diane smiles. “Bye Charity!”

Leaning back in the chair, she tried to decide on the best course of action for when Diane asked her to leave: she could plead her case, beg her to let her stay longer but that didn’t work even with her own family. It wouldn’t with Diane.

She thought of all the people in the village and wondered if there’d be any who would give her a place to stay. Definitely not the Dingles, who already made up the majority of the village, or the Tates, and Rhona and Tracy were firmly on Vanessa’s side. Maybe someone like Liam or David would give her a roof for a couple of days, someone who had no real reason to hate her but also no reason to like her and do her any favours either. She didn’t even have anything to offer them in exchange.

In short, she had no options. If Diane didn’t let her stay, she’d have nowhere to go and she’d rather die before she ended up back on the streets.

“Please don’t kick me out, not yet anyway. Just give me a day or two to find somewhere else, I won’t get in your way or cause any trouble I swear,” Charity blurted out as soon as she saw the front door open and Diane walk in.

Charity had spent the morning cleaning and tidying, the ritual of it reminding her of the early days of the pandemic in March, back when her and Vanessa and the kids had been in Jacob’s Fold and she’d been so afraid of Vanessa catching any kind of infection that she’d cleaned and scrubbed and sanitised until her own hands cracked and bled.

“Hello to you too. I’m not sure where you got the idea that I’m going to kick you out, but that’s not in my plans just yet,” she smiled, kindly. “I brought chicken sandwiches and chips, shall we sit down? The place looks spotless by the way.”

Charity froze for a second, she’d been so sure Diane planned to get rid of her and hearing that wasn’t the case had completely thrown her.

“I - yeah. I’ll get plates? Do you want something to drink?” Charity asked, wringing her hands together nervously.

“Water’ll do fine, get yourself a glass as well and for God’s sake, calm down Charity.”

Charity flashed Diane a smile, quickly grabbing stuff from the cupboards and making her way back to the sofa where Diane was waiting. They made quick work of dividing up the food onto each plate and it was only when Charity noted the smell of the food that she realised how hungry she was. She polished hers off so quickly that if she had been Johnny or Moses, Vanessa would have probably told them off.

“I, er, I forgot to have anything to eat last night. Or this morning.” Come to think of it, she hadn’t eaten anything since the small bowl of chips in the pub that Marlon passed her, not long after lunchtime when she’d gone in to pick up a couple of things she’d left there. She might have appreciated the kindness but Marlon hadn’t even _looked_ at her while she was there, like she was invisible. 

“Not the best of plans, especially not when you drink a bottle of gin in the middle of the night,” Diane responded with a pointed glare.

“No,” Charity agreed. There was really no point in denying it, not when she’d so clearly left the evidence for Diane to see. “I’m not exactly known for making good choices though, am I?”

“I don’t know about that, you were pretty sensible for a few years there Charity. But recently, yeah, you’ve not really made the best of choices. Drinking that much isn’t healthy, especially if that’s what you’ve been doing since you and Vanessa broke up. It’s been months.”

The harsh words made Charity flinch but Diane has her dead on. Not a word she said was incorrect and if anything, she was lucky Diane only seemed to be aware of the drinking she’d done last night. She must not have looked at the letter she wrote Vanessa.

“You know, Noah came to speak to me after I said you could stay here.”

That surprises Charity and her head snaps up. “Noah? What did he want? Is he okay?”

She’s worried. It isn’t something Noah had done if it wasn’t something serious.

“He seems fine. Said that things were quiet at home now. He seemed worried about you, actually.”

Charity’s eyes pricked with tears, and she felt her throat close up at that thought. She never wanted Noah to worry about her but she’d choose it over him saying he hates her.

“He wouldn’t be worried about me, I’m sure you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I’m fine.”

Diane hesitates before she continues speaking. “I didn’t misunderstand. He said that you’d been drinking a lot recently, so much it scared him. I think he thought I could help.”

Charity shakes her head, roughly wiping away the tears that she can’t hold back. “No. No, I’m totally fine. I might have the odd drink but who doesn’t? I mostly only drank when the kids were in bed anyway, he’s totally exaggerating.” Images passed through her head of Chas telling her off for being drunk at work, of Noah and Sarah coming home and her having nothing to offer them, of Cain looking absolutely disgusted at her when he caught her retrieving a bottle of wine from the bin.

More tears fell, and a sob escaped her throat. Diane’s right and Noah hadn’t been exaggerating.

Diane regarded her kindly, without the usual disgust and judgment that she was used to seeing from her family recently. It reminded her of the acceptance she had found with Vanessa.

“I just can’t sleep. I didn’t plan on drinking last night, it’s not like a habit. It just helps me stop thinking about everything so much, it stops some of the hurt. That’s all it is, I could stop if I wanted to. Besides, everyone drinks after a breakup.”

“Yeah, you’re right. God knows I’ve been there too. It hurts like hell but at some point you have to deal with it. Does drinking really help? Are you actually happy living like this? We’ve both worked in that pub Charity, we both know how easy it is for people to drink themselves to death. You don’t want that to be you.”

Charity shrugs. “Maybe I wouldn’t mind. My family probably want me to, I can’t ever get anything right in their eyes and they’re not shy about letting me know it. Even though everyone else gets forgiven, just not me. They’ve already said it’d be better if I was dead, I’d be doing them a favour.”

“You’re wrong, Charity. Maybe not about how your family treat you, but you’re wrong to think your children would be better without you. You’re their mum and they might be mad right now, but would Noah have come to see me if he didn’t care? Do you think Moses cares about any of this? He just wants his mum, he loves you Charity.”

“Even if you’re right, I’m still no good for them. No child needs an abusive, alcoholic parent, I can tell you that from experience. I _hit_ Noah the other week, I shouldn’t be around any of them,” she’s absolutely itching for a drink now, preferably one that was nicer than the gin last night. She digs her nails into the soft skin of her palm to try and distract herself. “Don’t make me talk about this Diane, please,” she pleads. She hasn’t been able to think about the lows she’d reached the night before and this conversation was coming dangerously close.

“I’m not going to make you talk about anything if you don’t want to but you do need to find a way to deal with your problems. Whether that’s talking to me or to someone else, or something else entirely, I don’t mind. But I can’t have you here if you’re going to be getting drunk every night and passing out down here, not with Gabby living here.”

Charity knows that nothing Diane is saying is unreasonable but the thought of having to address her problems makes her feel like she’s at the bottom of Kilimanjaro without a single item of climbing equipment and a broken leg. She also knows that Diane is her last chance and she doesn’t want to end up homeless so she asks “what do I do, then?”

“You ask for help. Your GP is probably a good start. Or maybe Chas, if she’d be easier for you to talk to?”

Diane makes it sound so simple, as though Charity hasn’t spent her entire life learning that asking for help doesn’t work. It might for other people, but in Charity’s experience people would offer help with one hand and then take it away with the other. Eventually she had realised she couldn’t rely on anyone but herself.

“Chas won’t help,” Charity is certain and Diane doesn’t argue the point. “I could ring my GP, I guess.”

_Just ask for help._ She doubted it would work, but she could try it for now if it meant she kept a roof over her head for longer. She’d done far worse things for the same reason.

She hates every second of the phone call she has with Manpreet. All she wants to do is reach for a bottle of wine and make the nerves go away.

“So, what is it that’s concerning you?” Manpreet asks.

“It’s nothing, I’m sorry for wasting your time,” Charity responds quickly, suddenly unsure of herself and afraid to tell another person of her problems.

“Whatever it is Charity, I’m sure it isn’t a waste of time. I’ll remind you everything is completely confidential so anything you tell me will remain between us.”

“I’ve just been struggling a bit, I guess,” Charity starts. “I might have been drinking a bit more than usual.”

Manpreet takes it in her stride, asking questions about her alcohol use and her general mental state. Charity lies outright when Manpreet asks if she’s had any suicidal thoughts recently and when she asks approximately how much she drinks, Charity underestimates. Manpreet asks whether she feels she needs help, and Charity says yes.

In the end, Manpreet had booked her in for some blood tests to check her liver function and some other things that Charity hadn’t totally paid attention to, once it felt like her part of the conversation was over. She’d said that while she couldn’t be totally confident in any diagnoses based solely on a telephone appointment, she felt it was fairly likely Charity was suffering from depression and had a level of dependent on alcohol. She’d referred her to specialist services for both and reassured Charity that both were things that could be dealt with, that many people were able to recover well although there was no quick fix.

She’d encouraged Charity to stop drinking but informed her to keep an eye out for any signs of withdrawal and if any occurred, to contact her so they could come up with a safer plan. She’d also prescribed antidepressants and told her that it could take a while for them to become effective.

Charity said thanks, double checked the dates and locations of the appointments that had been made, and hung up the phone.

The blood tests have the quickest turnaround, and Charity is relieved when Manpreet informs here there’s nothing to be overly concerned about. “But you do have to realise you were just lucky this time. If you keep drinking the way you have been, chances are that sooner or later you’ll do yourself some real damage.”

Charity nods. “I haven’t drank anything since the day before our appointment.” _6 days,_ she thinks to herself. _Hardly an achievement._

“Well that’s good news, especially if you’ve had no signs of withdrawal. You just need to keep at it and make sure you attend your appointments. You’ve made a good start, Charity.”

“I will,” Charity agreed.

She was dreading both appointments but Diane had been pleased when Charity had told her she’d contacted Manpreet. She had already decided she would attend them, fearing that if she didn’t then Diane wouldn’t let her stay. 

During her appointments, they encourage Charity to be as honest as possible and this time she checks the box that says yes, on the intake form when it asks about suicidal thoughts. She is honest about how much alcohol she drinks, even if she still tries to downplay it by saying that it’s not every day. She also says that they’re wasting their time, helping her, that there are people more deserving of support than she is.

She’s told to attend therapy once a week, and they recommend that she also attends AA meetings.

The therapist encourages Charity to seek support from her family and friends, stating that people will often do best with a strong support network in place. Charity nearly laughs out loud and tells them her family isn’t supportive and that’s unlikely to change.

Afterwards, she wonders whether it’s even worth it. She felt so raw and on edge after having to tell strangers about her problems and she thinks she’ll end up failing in the end anyway. She contemplates finding the nearest off-licence and buying the cheapest spirit they have on offer.

She’d have to leave, if she did that. She’d never be able to go back to Emmerdale or see her children again. _They’d prefer it_ she thinks. _They don’t want me in their life anyway._

She checks the time on her phone, and makes a completely different decision on the spur of the moment instead.

Halfway to Liverpool, Charity realises she’s probably made a mistake. Ross isn’t likely to be happy to see her but Moses might be and that might make the difference, she decides. She tries to pretend she isn’t completely terrified when she knocks at Ross’s door.

“You can get lost,” is all he says, slamming the door in her face but Charity jams her foot into the doorway to stop it closing completely and forces her way inside.

“Please, I just want to see him. I need to see him Ross,” she’s crying and Ross turns back around.

“Why on Earth would I let you do that? I know all about what you’ve been up to Charity, you’re no good for him. Cheating on your fiancée who has cancer? Getting back into crime, throwing yourself at any man who’ll have you? You might as well be back on the streets, you don’t deserve to see Moses.”

Charity wants to roll her eyes and point out that he’s cheated on people probably as often as she has and that he’s hardly ever been on the right side of the law either but that won’t help her.

“I just want five minutes with him, please. You can stay in the room, I don’t even have to be alone with him if that’s what you want. I’m desperate Ross, okay, I just want to see Moses and know that he doesn’t hate me too.”

She’s shouting at Ross and she reminds herself to calm down, she needs to get Ross on side. She’s still working on her plan when she hears little legs running towards her, pushing his way past Ross’s legs.

“Mummy, you’re here!” Moses shouts and throws his little arms around her. “I missed you lots and lots, when can I come home?”

She drops to her knees so she can hug him properly and can’t stop the tears from falling at the way he clings to her. Diane was right, he had missed her and he even still loved her.

“Mummy, what’s wrong, why are you crying?” he asks, bringing his hand up to her face to try and wipe away the tears like she’s done with him so many times.

“I just missed you a lot,” she starts and then realises she has no idea how she’s meant to be able to explain this to a five year old. “And I wish you could come home, but the thing is Moz, I’m not very well right now and I can’t look after you until I’m all good again so for now, you’ll stay with daddy. But once I’m okay again, I’m going to come back and get you and we can go back home, okay?”

“Not very well like mummy Ness?”

“Not quite, no. Mummy Ness is all better now, remember when you spoke to her on the phone, and she told you the Doctors had got rid of all the bad stuff inside of her?”

He nods.

“I’ve been really sad sweetheart, and I’ve done some really silly things, so now I need to get rid of all the bad stuff inside me but it’s different bad stuff to mummy Ness. Does that make sense?”

“But if you’re sad, I can give you hugs and make you happy.” At this rate, Charity may never stop crying. She has no idea how she’s had a part in raising Moses to be such a sweet little boy. It must have been Vanessa’s influence on him.

“Oh Moz, you and your brothers and your sister make me happier than anyone else, okay? But I’m your mummy, and that means that I need to look after you and I can’t do that properly when I’m not well. That’s why I might not see you again for a while but I’ll miss you all the time and I’ll think about your hugs.” 

“Moses, say goodbye and go up to your room please,” Ross interrupted and Moses held onto Charity in a hug so tight it was almost suffocating.

“Bye Mummy,” he said in a voice so sad that Charity had started crying even more. “Love you.”

“I love you, Moses,” and holds on to him for a while longer, kissing his face one, two, three times before she lets him go.

She’s aware Ross is watching her but he waits until Moses is upstairs and can’t overhear them before he speaks. “You’d better fucking explain this Charity. You can’t turn up here out of the blue and acting like the world has ended or like you’re about to drive your car off a cliff.”

“You said earlier that I might as well be on the streets? It’s only thanks to Diane that I’m not. And that I looked like I was about to drive my car off a cliff? I’ve thought about that once or twice in the past week alone. But if you want to talk about the world ending, then let’s just see how well you cope if Rebecca gets cancer and you have to watch her get sicker and sicker and there’s nothing you can do to make her better other than holding back her hair as she throws up. And then the chemo makes her hair fall out and she feels so awful she says she’d rather die of cancer than go through another round of it. And then you’re not even allowed to go into the hospital with her, you just have to wait outside in the car and wonder what’s happening. Not to mention the fact that she had practically no immune system after the chemo and she was so weak that the doctors said Covid would almost certainly kill her so we didn’t even leave the house for months except for hospital appointments. You go through any of that Ross, and then you get to judge me.”

Ross looks uncomfortable now, his left hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I need you to look after Moses while I sort myself out, and then I need you to believe me when I tell you I’m ready to look after him again. I’m serious Ross, you can’t try and keep him from me forever. You know I’d never put him in danger and you don’t have custody.”

“You’ll have to prove it, Charity. I’ll agree, but if there’s any doubt in my mind, I’m keeping him until there isn’t.”

“Fine,” she replies coolly. “Oh, and in the meantime, if I want to FaceTime him or he wants to talk to me? You’re not going to stop that.”

“Fine,” he looks at her and sighs. “Just sort your shit out, Charity. Moses deserves better than this.”

“I know. Can I just see him once more, and then I’ll go?” She figured she was pushing it, but she might as well try. She could have one more hug from Moses if she wasn’t going to see him again.

“Yeah, just go on up.”

“Thanks,” she forced herself to smile before jogging up the stairs, knocking on Moses’s door. “Moses, babe, I came to say bye.”

He’d opened it quickly and smiled widely at her. “Do you really have to go?” he asked, and Charity nodded.

“I do, but I’m going to come back as soon as I can. It might be a while, which is why I wanted to get one more hug from you before I went.”

Charity knelt down, opening her arms wide and Moses ran at her. “I want you to stay,” he’d said as he wrapped his arms around her, like that might stop her from being able to leave.

She sniffled. “I know, but I have to go. I want you to have loads of fun and I want to hear all about it when I come back, okay?”

He nodded, and pulled away just a little. “Wait! I have something for you. My teacher said it’s Mother’s Day soon, so I made you a card. It’s not finished yet, I wanted to draw a dog as well, but you can have it now.” He ran to his desk and picked up a badly folded piece of paper and then to his bed, grabbing one of his teddies.

“Your card,” he handed it to her. “And you have Teddy. You might want a hug when I’m not there, so you can hug Teddy instead.”

Ignoring Teddy for now, she pulled Moses back into her arms instead. “Thank you baby. That’s so kind and thoughtful. Okay, now you be good and remember that I love you. Bye, Moz.”

She waited until he said bye as well and then she collected the card and Teddy. She turned around, knowing that if she’d let herself she might not ever leave. She needed to be away from him for now, so that she could be a better mother when she returned. He still loved her and that was enough reason for Charity to fight.

Charity let herself in the front door at Brook Cottage and saw Diane in the living room. “Hi,” she waved. “Do you want a cuppa, I’m parched?” she offers and an odd look that she doesn’t know how to read cross Diane’s face. “Is everything okay?”

“Actually, yeah I think it is. A cuppa would be great, cheers Charity.”

Diane turns to look at her as she brings the tea into the living room. “You’re back late, I thought your appointment was this morning?”

And that’s when the penny drops. Diane must have assumed she’d been out drinking. “My appointment was this morning, I went to it and then I ended up driving to Liverpool. I wanted to see Moses,” she explains and she’s pleased that Diane apparently trusts her enough not to question her any further.

“How did it go?” she asks. “Was he pleased to see you?”

“Yeah, yeah he was,” Charity answered, a genuine smile taking over her face. The first genuine smile in a long time. “Wait a second, I’ll grab my bag and show you something.”

First, she pulls out the Mother’s Day card, and holds it up for Diane to see. “He made me this.” On the front, is a roughly drawn love heart that he’s coloured in red. There’s also a group of stick people, two big and two smaller. She assumes that it’s meant to be herself, Vanessa, Moses and Johnny. Inside, he’s written “Dear Mummy, Happy Mother’s Day I Love You, From Moses” and then lots of kisses. He’s clearly tried hard with his handwriting as well, which she knew was one of his least favourite parts of school. They’d struggled a lot with it during home learning, Moses finding it hard to form letters neatly and Charity wasn’t sure how to help but she spent a lot of time encouraging him.

Diane examines it closely. “Well, he’s no artist but that’s completely adorable. See Charity, I told you he still loved you.”

Charity rolled her eyes upwards, willing the tears to keep at bay. She’s already cried enough today.

“Yeah, he does,” Charity is still a little disbelieving. “He gave me so many hugs and said he missed me. He said he loved me. And he gave me Teddy.”

“Teddy?”

Charity nods, pulling the stuffed toy out of her bag. “He told me that I should have Teddy because I might want a hug and he’d wouldn’t be there so I could have Teddy instead.”

“Oh, that boy is good at pulling at the heartstrings, isn’t he? Not very imaginative at naming things though, although I suppose Teddy is still better than some of the names your family come up with,” Diane laughed.

Charity smiled, a little. “It wasn’t Moses who named him. This teddy is the first thing I ever bought for Noah,” she reveals. “Way back when I first got out of prison and I felt like I had nothing, I didn’t even think at the time I’d be able to get custody of Noah again.”

“But you did.”

“Yeah, I did. I didn’t know what to do with him at first, I had no idea how to be a mother. I probably still don’t but I do still love them all.” She wrapped her arms around Teddy, as she had done with Moses earlier. “Do you think they’ll ever forgive me?”

“I don’t know love, but I hope so. And I think you owe it to yourself to find out.”

“Yeah,” Charity nods. “I’m going to try, Diane.”

_March_

It’s been a month since she’d had a drink when she stops by the pub.

It’s odd that she’d lived here for so long and felt so at home here, more than she had almost anywhere else with the only exceptions of Jacob’s Fold and Tug Ghyll, even if she’d never officially lived there with Vanessa. The Woolpack had made her feel secure, it had given her a home and a livelihood that she _owned_ and she used to think it couldn’t be taken away from her. Now she’s not even sure if she’s welcome there as a customer and she half expects to be thrown out.

It’s Marlon behind the bar, and there’s not too many people scattered around the tables. It’s in that time between lunch and dinner and she’d chose it deliberately in the hope it would be quiet.

“Hi Marlon,” she says, taking a seat at one of the barstools. 

“Charity. Hey,” Marlon replied, seeming about as uncomfortable as Charity felt.

“Got a minute to talk?” she asked, relieved when Marlon nodded his head.

“Chas and Paddy are having lunch in the back room so we’ll have to stay out here, but it’s not like we’re busy. What’s up? If it’s the rest of the family, I don’t think I can get any of them to change their minds, they’re still really angry. Cain especially.”

She wants to ask how Debbie is. And the rest of them. Cain had taken such a delight in telling her that she couldn’t see Sarah anymore and publicly humiliating her and since then none of them had so much as looked at her.

“It’s not that, not really. Can I get an orange juice, please? Get yourself a drink too if you want.”

He poured out two orange juices and then waved away the ten pound note she offered him.

“Not really your usual, is it? Hung over from last night?”

Ignoring the part of her that wanted to get annoyed at the assumption, she just shook her head. “No. Actually, that’s kind of why I’m here. I wanted to tell you I’m getting sober, I haven’t had a drink in a month.”

His eyes briefly went wide with shock, and his whole demeanour seemed to soften as he processed her words. “Charity, that’s great. Really. I never realised things had gotten so bad. A month sober, that’s amazing.” He laughed a little. “Especially in this family, eh?”

Charity smiled, tight. She wanted to question how he couldn’t have noticed. She wanted to know why none of them had bothered to intervene when she’d started to turn up at work drunk more often than sober and Noah and Sarah had both moved out and Moses had never come home from Ross’s. She wasn’t even good at hiding it. She’d helped herself to the optics in front of Chas more than once and Marlon was there when she stumbled drunk into the pub at opening time. Maybe if either of them had tried to help sooner, instead of just getting annoyed at her, things may never have gotten quite as bad as they did. If just one of them had asked her if she was okay and offered her genuine help rather than telling her to just get over it. She knows she can’t blame others for her own choices but they had seen her hurting and hadn’t wanted to help. Diane, someone with absolutely no obligation to Charity, had cared more than her family had. She could call him out on it, but what would she gain from alienating Marlon when at least he was speaking to her?

“Yeah, I guess that is the one advantage of being excommunicated from your entire family. No one forcing me to drink a welly full of ale.” The joke falls flat and the guilt is clear as day on Marlon’s face.

“I’m sure they’ll come around eventually. They’re still angry, but you know what they’re like, it won’t be forever.”

“Maybe. _I’m_ still angry too, actually. I know I made mistakes but I’m owning up to it. You all watched me struggle and didn’t even try and help. And then you took my home and my business,” she hadn’t really meant to meant to say all that but it was a relief to have it out in the open, that it wasn’t only her who needed to earn forgiveness.

“I’m sorry,” Charity breaks the silence before Marlon can. “Anyway, I just wanted to explain, I guess. And to ask you not to serve me any alcohol. Ever.”

She avoids his eyes, not wanting to see any judgment there. Or worse, pity.

He’s quiet when he does answer and Charity thinks there’s some guilt in his voice. “You’re right, we did let you down. After the year you’d had, we probably could have looked out for you more and realised you were genuinely struggling. I’m sorry for that.” She thinks it’s a relief it was Marlon she’d ended up speaking to today. He always was one of the more level headed Dingles. “Look, I’m not going to tell anyone anything you don’t want me to but I’m sure the others would be glad to know how you’re doing.”

She nods, figuring that having Marlon at least slightly on her side again could help with the rest of the family. 

“You can tell them. I don’t expect them to care, they’ve all made it very clear how they feel about me now. Anyway I’d better go, this is getting far too sappy for my liking and I’m FaceTiming Moses soon.” With a wave, she jumped up from the barstool and headed out the exit quickly.

When Diane gets her a job at the B&B, it’s a real turning point. To begin with there’s no set hours and she just covers in emergencies or when they’re especially busy and they need an extra pair of hands. The work wasn’t difficult but it kept her busy and she felt like it was a start in paying Diane back.

She’s also spent the best part of a month which very little to fill her time, except for therapy and AA meetings which left her feeling on edge. The only relief she had from it was when she FaceTimed Moses, but during her first shift at the B&B she finds a distraction that feels safe. Too often in the past, she’s turned to crime or other self destructive behaviours.

It also had the added advantage of letting her earn some money. Her financial situation wasn’t too bad, with the money from the sale of the pub still sitting in her bank account but she’d resisted the urge to spend it. Once she’s back on her feet properly, she’ll need to find herself somewhere more permanent to live. It feels like progress, once she’s able to start living on the wages she earns and she can save the pub money for something more meaningful. The thing she had been willing to spent any real money on was Noah’s birthday. She’d tried asking him what he wants but given that he still isn’t talking to her, she takes the salesman’s recommendations about some video games that are apparently popular and she buys him an expensive pair of trainers knowing that they’re his favourite brand. She ends up leaving the presents and the card with Belle, who promises Charity she’ll pass them on.

“I called Ross,” Diane announced one morning, out of the blue. Charity frowns. She’d tried to ring yesterday to speak to Moses, but he hadn’t answered. She’d assumed he was busy so she’d gone back to her task of tidying the kitchen and trying to ignore how much she missed Moses.

“Okay?” her voice is tight, anxious. She isn’t sure what reason Diane would have for contacting Ross.

“I didn’t tell him much, but I said you were getting back on your feet and were missing Moses. He said he could drive over with Moses on Friday if you’d take him back after the weekend?”

Charity stares, not sure how to respond. She tamps down her automatic urge to get annoyed at Diane for interfering: she knows that Diane is just trying to help, that she is helping but a lifetime of people with ulterior motives have made her cautious.

“Honestly I think Ross was glad for the excuse to get out of Liverpool for a bit,” Diane continued as Charity didn’t speak. “I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped.”

“No, no you haven’t. Thank you,” Charity laughs a little, the situation feeling quite absurd. Diane had just _apologised_ for arranging it so Charity could see her son. “God, all this honestly and sincerity really doesn’t come naturally to me so you’d best appreciate my effort here.” Diane smiled, motioning for Charity to continue. She seemed to be able to sense that she had more to say.

“I’ve missed him so much, every time I speak to him and see his little face, I just want to beg Ross to let me have him for a while. I wasn’t sure if I was ready or if Ross would think I was ready. And I was afraid that I’d end up reaching for a bottle if he said no. Really Diane, thank you.” It’s been not far off two months now since she stopped drinking. Almost two months since she’d last seen Moses in person. She’d thought of him constantly and for weeks she’d carried his Mother’s Day card in her pocket to remind herself of why she was doing this whenever she struggled. It was only once the paper had worn thin and started to tear that she’d removed it and put it on her bedside table for safe keeping.

“Moses adores you and Ross knows that. That photo you have of the two of you on the beach is precious, he looks at you like you hung the moon and it’s clear as day you miss him. Yeah, you might still struggling but you also haven’t missed a single appointment or AA meeting. You’ve been tempted but you haven’t drank. It’s been long enough, you deserve some time with him Charity. And he deserves to be able to see you as well.” The genuine kindness that Diane shows her still surprises Charity and at times it reminds her of Lisa, with her endless cups of tea and encouragement but limited patience for Charity’s more self-destructive moments.

Not for the first time, Charity reminds herself that she couldn’t lose Diane’s support, especially with things with her family still difficult. Marlon, soft apeth that he is, had started talking to her a little at the pub and he refused her money when she went to pay for the orange juice that’s become her new go-to order in the pub. Usually just small talk and he’d never mention any of her kids or grandkids, but he’d taken to asking her advice about the Woolpack. It had most often been Charity who dealt with most of the financial side and apparently Chas and Marlon hadn’t been able to figure it out themselves so Charity had taken him through the accounts and her systems step-by-step. That was the most progress she’d managed to make, though. The others still blanked her if they happened to pass in David’s shop or the cafe and Noah, Sarah and Debbie still weren’t answering her calls or messages.

She shook her head a little, clearing her thoughts. She needed to focus on Moses for now. “Thank you, Diane. He’s a little monster though, I’ll try to make sure he doesn’t make too much noise or get in your way too much. Are you sure you don’t mind him being here too?” Charity asked, even though she was fairly sure she already knew the older woman’s answer.

Diane had been more supportive than Charity had dared to even imagine, and Charity was already thinking of making a quick trip to David’s to buy all of Moses’ favourites. Maybe Sarah’s and Noah’s as well, who she thought might agree to see Moses at least, even if they didn’t talk to her while they were there.

“Of course not love, any of the kids are welcome here anytime. You know that.”

“I was just thinking I’d invite Sarah and Noah as well,” Charity added. “I’m not sure they’ll want to, but they might for Moses.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me. I can stay out the way if you’re going to have a houseful here.”

“No, it’s fine. We both know Sarah would rather see you than me anyway and it might help to keep things calm if you’re here. Not that you have to stay. It’s up to you, obviously,” Charity trails off, awkwardly.

“So long as I’m not needed at the B&B I’ll be here then.”

Marlon had let slip once that Noah and Samson had a standing arrangement to play video games on a Thursday, while Lydia was out shopping and Sam was out the house at work. They’d be up at Wishing Well until 8:30 when Lydia got back home and then Noah would head back to Jacob’s Fold. Charity thought her best plan would be to intercept him on his way home. He’d be bound to be in a good mood and he’d at least have to listen to her until he got back to Jacob’s Fold and could slam the door in her face.

So, that’s how she found herself perching awkwardly at one of the tables outside the Woolpack and clutching a mug of tea, more to keep her hands warm than anything else.

She’s anxious as she waits to see him. She knows there’s a good chance he won’t even give her the time of day but she reminds herself that this is for Moses and she knows Noah loves his little brother even if he’s still angry with her.

“Noah!” she hopes the nerves aren’t too obvious in her voice as he comes into sight.

He pauses and Charity takes the opportunity to jog over to where he’s stood.

“Can we talk? It doesn’t have to be long if you don’t want, but I’d appreciate it if you’d hear me out.”

Noah nods, but doesn’t say anything. “Do you want to sit in the pub, away from the cold?’ her words are more hopeful now that he’s agreed to listen to her.

“Might as well, it is pretty cold out here. You can buy me a beer?” he grins.

“Nice try,” she smiled, “come on then.”

It’s Chas serving this evening and Charity tries not to pay attention to the curious glances being thrown their way.

“Coke, yeah?’ Noah nods in agreement and Charity orders with Chas before sitting back down opposite her son. He seems taller and has a five o’clock shadow now and Charity tries not to think about how he’s growing up without her. Soon enough he’ll be an adult. She wants to ask him everything and find out how he’s been for this past month or so but she isn’t sure how much he’d be willing to tell her or how much time he’ll give her for this conversation.

“Listen, Moses is visiting at the weekend and I was really hoping you’d come over too? He misses you like mad, last time I spoke to him he wouldn’t shut up about wanting to play football with you. Sarah’s already agreed but she’s assured me it’s only to see Moses and Diane and that she doesn’t want to talk to me. I’ll completely understand if it’s the same for you too.” She’d practiced this speech over and over and now she’d actually spoken to him, it seemed simultaneously too much and not enough.

He doesn’t answer for a few long moments and Charity tamps down her anxiety.

“Can’t exactly say I’m bothered about seeing Diane but I’ll come over. It’ll be nice to see Moses.”

It’s exactly what she’d been hoping for, he’d actually agreed to come over. And he hasn’t even outright rejected her. Her chest felt tight, like she couldn’t quite breathe properly and she didn’t know what to do with this happiness and hope she suddenly felt.

“Really? Oh Noah I’m happy, Moses will be so excited to see you. If you want, I’ll get in ingredients for tea and we could all eat together? You can choose, whatever you like. Anything at all.” 

“Well then, what about a takeaway?” Noah replied, smiling, and it was all Charity could do to nod and agree. Her and Noah, having a conversation without arguing and he was smiling and almost seemed happy to be there with her? She’d do anything to keep that smile on his face, to keep him happy and healthy.

“Yeah, kid. We can get a takeaway.”

Now that that’s sorted and Noah isn’t immediately trying to leave, she can’t hold back all the other questions she has. “How have you been? How’s school, how’s Sarah? I’ve missed you so much, you’ve got to know how sorry I am and I’ll do anything to make it up to you.” She leaned forward in her seat.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. School’s going okay and Sarah’s happy but she misses Debbie, they’re on the phone all the time. I don’t think she’s planning on coming back anytime soon, she’s happy there. Dunno why, the weather’s even worse there than it is here.”

No one else in the family had mentioned Debbie to Charity, not even indirectly so relief bloomed in her chest hearing that her daughter was at least doing well in Scotland. She missed her something awful, but deep down she could recognise that physical distance between them was probably for the best right now: at least things couldn’t get any worse.

“Good. It’s all I want for them, for all of you. For you to be happy and healthy, you do know that don’t you Noah? You know I love you all more than anything.”

Something flickered in Noah’s eyes. “You’re pretty shit at showing that. All you’ve done recently is hurt us.”

It was nothing that Charity hadn’t already told herself, nothing that hadn’t already been said by every other member of their family, but hearing it so bluntly from Noah was crushing in a way that made her want to reach for one of the bottles of vodka behind the bar.

She couldn’t. She knew she’d hurt people, knew she’d hurt Noah, and that drinking wouldn't change that. Taking a sip of her coke, she forced her eyes away from the bar and back to her son.

"I know I did. I’ve made so many mistakes and I wish I could change them. I promise you Noah, I’m going to be better in the future. And I know that’s something you’ve before from me so you won’t believe me, but I’m going to prove it to you.” She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself before continuing. She cried at the drop of a hat these days, being constantly forced to actually confront her emotions, but that wouldn’t help her right now with Noah.

“You should know I’ve stopped drinking. I’ve been sober for nearly two months since just after Diane let me move in. I’m going to meetings and counselling and everything. It’s still quite early days, but it’s helping. Manpreet’s prescribed me anti-depressants too. Diane’s been really supportive as well, and I swear the last thing I want to do is let you down again. I’m going to keep going and I hope at some point it’s enough to earn your trust back because that really is the only thing that matters to me.”

Being this honest with Noah wasn’t something that came easily. In the past, she’d always tried to soften the blow with sweets and junk food but Noah was too old for that to work anymore. He deserved the truth and she needed to be able to give him it. They’d never be able to improve anything with lies.

“I want to believe you, mum. But I don’t trust you, I can’t trust you after you’ve lied to me so many times and you ruined everything. I was so happy when were all in Jacob’s Fold and you were happy as well Mum! You were never really happy before Ness but you just fucked everything up like you usually do. And then all you did was drink and I’d already lost Ness and it felt like I lost you too. You weren’t there for us, you cared about your stupid scams more than us! I think I’d have forgiven you for making Ness leave but we obviously weren’t enough for you!” he angrily wipes away a tear and Charity is sure he hadn’t meant to say so much.

He pauses for a moment. “It’s good if you really have stopped drinking and you’re getting help. I’ve always hated it when you drink, it turns you into a total mess and I don’t like you when you’re like that.”

Charity swallowed past the lump that had formed in her throat as she took in Noah’s words. She thought of her own father and the impact that his alcoholism had had on her as a child. She thought about how by age eight, she’d already learnt how to recognise whether he was drunk enough to beat her. By nine, she’d figured out how much money she could steal from his wallet without him noticing so that she could buy food from the corner shop on her way to and from school because otherwise there would be days where she didn’t eat. There were always bottles in the cupboard, but her dad didn’t seem to think food was as important as booze. By ten, she’d taken to spending as much time at Cain and Chas’s house as possible. It was easier over there, Cain was older and unafraid of anything, and he liked Charity and made her feel safe. Her own father had never shown her any affection so she’d gone looking for it with Cain instead.

“I know. You’re completely right and looking back on it now Noah, I’m so ashamed of how I acted and I’m so sorry for hurting you. I don’t expect you to forgive me for it but I want to make this up to you if you’ll let me. I don’t want to be that same person anymore and I’m trying really hard to do that.”

On a whim, she held out her pinky finger with a hopeful expression on her face. Moses had learnt what a pinky promise was when he started school and ever since he’d taken to insisting that any promise didn’t count otherwise (at one point, he’d even told her and Vanessa that they needed to do so at their wedding, because he’d learnt at school that a wedding was a way for two people to promise to always love each other. They’d both laughed, and then Moses had held both of their little fingers with his and he promised he would always love his mummies, prompting Vanessa to burst into tears.)

Noah shook his head a little and rolled his eyes, but linked his pinky with hers anyway. “Don’t think this means I’m not still mad at you,” and then, quieter, sounding more like the younger child that he wasn’t anymore. “Don’t drink anymore. Please. I don’t want to lose you forever.”

Then he’d finished off his coke, stood up and said “text me what time I should come over on Friday,” and walked out the pub as if it had been a totally normal conversation and he hadn’t just knocked Charity for six. She had no idea when or how he’d grown up so much or become so mature but she knew this was her last chance with him and was more determined than ever not to mess things up again. She would get his trust back, she was sure of it.

Noah stopped at the exit and turned back to her. “Mum,” he called. “I like the trainers you got me for my birthday. Thanks.”

A genuine smile blooms across her face, and then Chas slid into the seat Noah had just vacated. “That looked like an important chat,” she said nonchalantly, as though this wasn’t the first time since she’d signed away her shares in the pub that Chas had even spoken to her, and even longer since they’d had a conversation that hadn’t been a blazing row.

“I’ve got Moses this weekend, I was asking Noah if he’d come over as well. Even Sarah’s agreed.” Chas nodded, seemingly happy to accept this half-explanation of the conversation.

“Good. I hope it goes well,” the sincerity of Chas’s words shocked her; she’d been expecting a telling-off, yet another warning that she was no good for the kids and she’d better not hurt them again.

“It’s dead in here, do you want to go through to the back and we’ll have a catch up? I’ll lock the doors and we can open a bottle of wine like the old days,” Chas offered and Charity froze, the offer totally blindsiding her. She didn’t want alcohol, she wasn’t even tempted and Chas’s face had fallen almost as soon as she’d said it.

“Oh god, Charity, sorry. I didn’t mean - Marlon mentioned - sorry. Ignore that, it was stupid of me. Offering wine I mean, not the invitation. We could still talk, if you want? Marlon’s told me some things and he had a point.” Charity guesses this means Marlon had told her exactly what the two of them had talked about. “We can still talk to each other, can’t we? We can be friends.” 

If Charity had ever let herself think about it, this is what she’d have expected from Chas. Chas wasn’t the type to make a big thing of apologies, preferring instead to just ignore whatever the issue had been and try to go back to how they’d been.

Chas’s obvious nerves had diffused the tension, for Charity anyway, and she let out a surprised laugh.

“Yeah, yeah I’d like that.”

Charity hadn’t let on, but she’d been nervous about seeing Moses. He’d been with Ross full time for so many months now that she’d been so afraid that he’d have gotten used to it and that he wouldn’t want to stay with her anymore. However, as soon as Ross had pulled up and opened the car door, Moses had jumped out and sprinted to her without a second’s hesitation. She’d knelt down and he’d hugged her tightly, whispering that he missed her and loved her, completely unprompted.

“I love you too babe, more than anything,” she’d whispered back and if Ross had noticed how glossy Charity’s eyes had gone as she stood back up with Moses on her hip, she was glad that he didn’t mention it. “I’ve missed you so much, I’ve bought your favourite Paw Patrol cereal and we can make a cake later, if you’d like. And Noah and Sarah are going to come see you too, and I’ve got your toys at Diane’s house for you to play with.” Moses, her happy little boy, just grinned at her and pressed a kiss to her cheek. Usually he was an independent little thing and preferred to run off and play but he was always more clingy and affectionate with them both.when he hadn’t seen Charity or Ross in a while.

“You can come in for a coffee if you’d like,” she offered to Ross, figuring it was the least she could do. They needed to figure out a schedule for Moses anyway. The second she’d seen him, she knew she couldn’t go this long without him again.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll just grab his bag from the boot and meet you indoors?”

It was a little after 4 when there was a knock at the door and Moses squealed and threw up his hands. The only problem with that is that he’d been holding a bag of chocolate buttons at the time and Charity had only been able to watch as the chocolate flew through the air and landed across the kitchen floor. Moses was totally unbothered, choosing instead to look at Charity and ask if it was Noah and Sarah here. Before waiting for an answer from his mum, he jumped off the chair he’d been stood on to reach the counter - Charity had flinched, but he was fine - and ran off to find out.

She caught up to him as he was pulling at the door handle, stiffer here then the one at Jacob’s Fold and therefore causing him an unexpected difficulty. “Mummmmmm, open the door! Quick!” She scooped him up and settled him on her hip as she opened the door. He was too big for that now really, and if anyone asked she’d claim it’s just to stop him running out into the street but in truth she had no idea what to expect from Noah and Sarah and a quick cuddle from Moses would help to calm her nerves.

His hair tickled her skin as he rested his head on her shoulder. Dropping a quick kiss to the top of his head, she pulled the door open to find only Noah stood waiting. “Moses! Hey little bro, I missed you,” Noah said as he followed them into the house. He offered his fist out to Moses who grinned and bumped his own little fist against Noah’s. She was glad that despite the time spent apart, the two of them seemed to be as close as they had ever been. “Sarah saw Diane on the way here, she was going to the supermarket for something and Sarah wanted to go with. Diane said they wouldn’t be too long.”

Charity nodded, and figured that if anything, this might actually work out in her favour. Sarah would be more likely to believe that Charity really was doing better if the information was coming from Diane than from herself. Of course, Charity herself would still need to prove it but Diane might just be able to convince Sarah to give her a chance.

“Well then,” Charity smiled at her two boys. “How about we go have some of the chocolate cake Moses and I made earlier, as a treat before dinner.”

Moses’s answering screech, from where he was still resting on her shoulder, was deafening.

Noah however, laughed. “You made a cake? And you’re sure it won’t give us all food poisoning?”

“Yeah Noah, it’s really good! It’s got loadsa chocolate and we mixed it all together then put icing on top! And then even more chocolate on the top!” Oh Moses, bless him. He was so proud of it and had already made her take a photo to send to Ross.

And ever since then, he’d been begging Charity to let him have a slice.

“Let’s go then Moz, you best show me this cake.”

Diane and Sarah had arrived ten minutes later to find Moses absolutely covered in chocolate, giggling loudly at something Noah had said. The three of them were sat at the kitchen table, Charity more than content to sit and listen as her boys spoke to each other.

“Hi Granny,” Sarah said without looking at Charity. “Hey Moses! Is some of this cake for me?” she asked, much happier speaking to Moses than she was with Charity. She’d been expecting it and had told herself to be ready, but it still stung and she focussed instead on Moses grin as he passed Sarah a plate.

“Do you want a slice too, Diane? It was mostly Moses’s handiwork, although he left me to clean up by myself, didn’t you you little monster!” Charity laughed, tickling him.

“Mummy gave me chocolates and she said I could watch tv!” Moses announced as Charity passed Diane a plate. She noticed the look in Diane’s eyes and grumbled.

“Stop looking at me like that, I’m _not_ soft.”

“It’s not a bad thing if you are, pet. It’s good to see you look happy for a change.”

_April_

She’s almost three months sober when she first comes close to relapsing

Diane finds her on the armchair, clutching a cheap bottle of whiskey - her dad’s preferred drink when she was young. She’s staring off into space and doesn’t seem to even register Diane’s presence until she’s right in front of her.

Diane is confused to say the least, because ever since Charity had started having Moses at the weekends again, she’d been happier than she had been the whole time they’d been living together. She was relieved to note that the bottle clearly hadn’t been opened, but that didn’t mean Charity hadn’t drank something else.

“You’d better explain, quick,” she says, and Charity startles. Her grip on the bottle loosens and it falls to the floor with a dull thud.

“Diane,” her voice is hoarse and there’s absolutely no emotion in her eyes. She reaches for her bag and passed her the stack of paperwork, her father’s will at the top, that she’d barely even looked at herself. She knew she probably should but there would be time for that later. For now, Charity barely knew how to process the news that her father had died. She isn’t sure whether she cares and she was so surprised he’d even put her in her will.

_The Last Will and Testament of Obadiah Dingle_ , Diane reads and she suddenly understands. “Oh Charity, love,” she says and sits down beside her, a comforting hand on her knee.

“I haven’t drank anything. I bought the whiskey and I thought about it but I haven’t drank. I don’t even know why I’m upset. I’ve not had a relationship with him since I was 13. Since he took Debbie away from me and kicked me out and you know what happened then. I don’t want to think about him.” Charity looked at Diane, the desperation on her face clear. “I don’t know what to do, Diane.”

She thinks back to when Lisa had died and she’d been able to keep going, knowing that what she was doing was helping her family. She’d had all her folders of notes, all her preparations ready to carry out Lisa’s wishes. She remembers helping Vanessa make plans for Frank’s funeral and she’d felt useful. Now, faced with her father’s death, she just feels lost and alone.

“I don’t know love, but there’s no rush to figure any of it out right now. At some point a funeral needs to be planned and you might want to let your family know what’s happened but it doesn’t need to be today.” Diane moved closer, stroking Charity’s shoulder comfortingly.

“I should tell Uncle Zac, I guess. And Noah, not that he ever met my father: I wouldn’t have let that man anywhere near to my children, not that he was ever bothered about being a grandfather,” a sad look crosses Charity’s face. “Or about being a father.”

“Well, there you go then. Your first step, once you’re feeling up to it. I’ll make you a cuppa. Have you eaten anything?”

She shakes her head, the idea of putting any food in her stomach making her feel sick. “I’ll eat later, I don’t think I can right now. Thanks though.”

Diane nods and set about making the drinks.

“They told me it was a heart attack. He was alone, they didn’t even find him for a couple of days until he didn’t show up at work,” Charity frowns a bit, she wasn’t quite sure how that made her feel. Sad, maybe. “He was so alone that no one besides his work noticed he was gone. He’s not exactly a loss though, he was cruel and vindictive and I’m surprised he remembered I existed fo long enough to put me in his will.” Diane sits back down, offering Charity a cup of tea. “Probably just his twisted way of making things up to me. _I’ll kick you out and take your child off you but here, have my house and car and anything else I own, that’ll clear my conscience for being the world’s worst father._ I guess I shouldn’t be speaking so ill of the dead.” She forces herself to stop rambling.

“Thanks for the tea, by the way.”

“For what it’s worth, I think you can feel whatever you like about this. From what I’ve heard, he wasn’t a nice man. But I think you need to deal with it somehow, you can’t hide from it. It might be worth speaking to your therapist about.”

“I already emailed, actually,” she allows herself a small smile, a small moment of pride for herself that for once, she’s not only taking advice but she’s learnt enough to act without someone telling her too. “Explained the situation and gave them my availability for an extra appointment this week.” 

“You’ll roll your eyes, but I’m proud of you kid,” Diane told her and Charity stubbornly didn’t roll her eyes, just to prove a point but she did look away from Diane, not entirely comfortable with the compliment.

Charity lifted the mug, finishing off the last of tea quickly. “I’m going to head up to Wishing Well and speak to Uncle Zac. Would you do me a favour and pour away that whiskey I bought?” Charity tried to say it matter of factly but her voice wavered. The confidence she had gained until this point was totally shook and she was relieved when Diane agreed easily: she didn’t really want to think about it herself, not when she had to face Zac and tell Noah.

The conversation with Uncle Zac hadn’t gone too badly, all thing’s considered. Cain had been visiting there too at the time Charity turned up and they’d been annoyed at her for showing up out of the blue but calmed down as soon as Charity had explained why she was there.

“Good riddance,” Cain had mumbled under his breath and Charity inclined her head in agreement.

She asked Zac if he’d deal with the funeral for her and he’d agreed fairly easily, not arguing when she said she wasn’t sure if she even planned to attend it. The two of them, Cain especially, knew about the hell her father had put her through.

At this point, an awkward silence had settled over the three of them, none of them quite sure what they were meant to say. She’d made some real progress with Marlon and Chas and things were getting better with Noah, but she hadn’t made any real attempt yet to reach out to either of the men in the room with her and neither had they. 

“Cain, I’m glad you’re here actually,” Charity said, after a few moments had passed. He looked confused, and she continued hesitantly, “I was hoping you’d tell Debbie. I figured she should hear it from one of us directly and she still isn’t answering my calls.”

“Yeah, of course I will. I was going up to see her tomorrow anyway.” And then, surprising them both, he wrapped his arm around Charity’s shoulder. “You’ve always been stronger than that bastard. Don’t let this drag you down,” She nodded and briefly let her body lean into Cain. It was strange, to let Cain comfort her like this again and she wondered whether he was thinking of the past as well.

“Right, I should go and speak to Noah and I’ll give Ryan a ring later on, but can you guys tell everyone else?”

They’d nodded, and Zac told her to look after herself as she headed back out the door.

She texted Noah from the car, saying she was on the way and needed to speak to him about something important but that he shouldn’t worry. He answered with the thumbs up emoji and not long later she was knocking on the door at Jacob’s Fold.

“Sarah and Belle are out, they went to do the food shopping. Come in then.”

Charity followed Noah inside and was surprised to note that most of the decor was still the same as when she lived there: not even the photos had changed.

“So, what’s going on then?” he asked once they’d sat down.

“I found out this morning that my dad died. You already know I didn’t have much of a relationship with him so there’s not much to say about it, but I wanted you to hear it from me.”

Noah had been incredible at taking the news in his stride. They’d had a brief conversation about her father and he’d believed her when she told him that she’d bought whiskey, but she hadn’t drank. He’d hugged her and asked when she next had Moses again, saying that he wanted to spend time with them again. He even said that he’d think about it when she invited him over for dinner.

They were still talking when Sarah and Belle returned and Noah had explained why Charity was there. They both looked at Charity with obvious sympathy and she bit back a smile. “I’m okay, I’m dealing with it. Sarah, Cain’s going up to Scotland tomorrow and he’s going to tell your mum in person. Don’t mention it before then if you speak to her?”

“Yeah, okay,” she’d agreed and she crossed the room towards Charity, giving her a brief hug. “I’m sorry Granny,” she’d whispered, pulling away quickly. Sarah was having more trouble than most in being able to forgive Charity: she blamed her for Debbie’s departure and Charity understood that. It had been her fault, after all.

“Thanks kiddo,” she’d answered and Sarah had smiled a little before rushing up the stairs to her room. It made Charity smile, to think of how some things didn’t change. Back when they’d still lived there together, it had felt like they could go days without seeing Sarah sometimes, the amount of time she spent chattering away to her friends online.

She’d spent a bit more time talking with Noah and Belle, helping them to unpack the food shopping, before their conversation petered out and it felt like time for her to leave. She said goodbye and Noah had walked with her to the door, giving her another hug before she left and saying he’d see her on Saturday when Moses got back home.

She decides against going to her father’s funeral, and Uncle Zac is understanding when she tells him. He’s the only one from the family who’ll be there and Charity gets him to give her the details of the cemetery and the plot where he’s buried.

She visits him just once in her life, on the one year anniversary of his death. Vanessa holds her hand as they walk and then drops it, giving Charity space when they get to the right location.

She has a small bunch of flowers in her hand that she places on his grave.

“I forgive you,” is all she says and she looks at the gravestone for a few moments. It’s just his name and the years he lived. No inscription describing him as a _Loving Father, forever in our hearts_ as so many of the surrounding graves do. Just _Obadiah Dingle, 1950 - 2021._

Feeling satisfied that she’d done what she came here to do, she turned back to Vanessa and reclaimed her hand. “Let’s go,” Charity said, tugging her back in the direction of the exit. She didn’t want to hang around here any longer than necessary.

She and her father, unfortunately, have their similarities. They’d both made mistakes and hurt their children and weren’t usually very good people. “You changed though, Charity, that’s the difference. You put in the effort to be better and when you made mistakes you owned up to it, you apologised, and you more than made up for it,” Vanessa says when Charity voices this opinion to her later on. “You are not your father.”

After her father’s death, Charity continues to do well for another three months. She heals and she even starts to thrive. And then she relapses with a bottle of vodka.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any comments are appreciated! I’m not really a writer so if anyone enjoyed this, I’d love to know. It’s already ended up longer than I planned, there will be more chapters to come. 
> 
> I’ve also not really been properly watching Emmerdale in a while so if there’s any glaring mistakes about any plot lines in the show, my apologies


	2. Chapter 2

_May_

Charity’s doing the washing up while Moses and Noah watch a film. Her phone rings and she pulls off a washing up glove to pick it up and check it. She nearly drops the phone in the sink when she reads the name _Debbie_ across the screen.

Her hands shaking only slightly, she swipes to answer the call and brings the phone to her ear. “Hey you,” she says, deciding that faking confidence for this conversation is her best option. “Did you mean to call me?”

“I’ve been thinking about calling since last week when Dad was here,” Debbie answers, sounding about as confident as Charity feels. “He told me what happened and that you’re sober now. I didn’t know if I believed him.”

Charity feels like her heart might beat out of her chest. Debbie doesn’t sound too angry with her, but there’s certainly hurt and confusion in her voice.

“I am. I haven’t had a drink in months, since not long after I moved in with Diane.” Charity needs for Debbie to believe her. She’s made so much progress with her other kids but not Debbie, her only daughter and eldest child who had always had the ability to make Charity feel about two inches tall. There’s too much history between them, too many occasions of them hurting the other for things to ever be easy between them.

“Good. Even when your dad - y’know. You didn’t drink then?” Debbie sounds unsure, Charity thinks, but not totally disbelieving. 

“I thought about it, I won’t lie. I bought a bottle of whiskey but I didn’t even open it,” the honestly spills out of her, and she continues. “I, er, I go to therapy now, and to AA meetings. I’m on antidepressants. I know I’ve hurt you and I’m sorry for that, I want to make up up for it if you’ll let me.” She knows she sounds desperate, but she is. Her dad’s death had reinforced that she didn’t want to end up estranged from her own children as her father had been from her.

“Well, that’s good,” Debbie answers eventually. It had thrown her, to hear her mother so upfront and honest, and apparently accepting the fact she needed help. “I’m coming home in a couple of weeks, just to visit. We should talk.”

“I’d love that,” Charity answers quickly, her heart soaring.

“I’m still mad at you, don’t get me wrong. I haven’t forgiven you yet. But when dad told me what had happened and he told me that you were actually getting help... I could barely believe it, honestly. Even Chas keeps telling me you’ve changed and I started to think I could give you a chance.”

God, her daughter. Charity would never understand how she had grown up to be so good when she had herself and Cain as parents. “A chance is all I want. I don’t expect you to forgive me, I know I don’t deserve it, but I miss you and Jack and Sarah and if you’ll give me a chance, that’s all I need.”

“Well, God knows you’ve given me enough chances too. You’re still my mum, I want you to be okay.” Debbie pauses, before continuing, more hesitant now. “I’ve been feeing guilty. We should have realised you needed more help, even before everything happened with Vanessa. Everything you were dealing with would have been difficult for anyone, the cancer and Johnny’s adoption and looking after all the kids by yourself. And then after you broke you and you obviously weren’t okay. I just wish you’d asked for help sooner and maybe everything wouldn’t have got as bad as it did.” Debbie’s voice sounds thick and Charity wondered if she’s crying as well.

“I can’t say it wouldn’t have been nice, to have had support sooner. I don’t think I’d have gotten this far without Diane’s support,” Charity muses. “But I’m an adult and you’re my daughter. I don’t want you to feel guilty over any of this.” Some of her family, yes. She still held some anger towards Chas and Marlon and Cain who had been around all the time and had kicked her when she was down. But not Debbie, never her daughter. “I’m meant to look after you, not the other way around. Maybe things could have been different, but I messed up so much and there’s no one I can blame for that but myself.”

A slight sob escapes her throat and Moses, who had wondered into the kitchen for a drink, looks up at her. “Mummy, what’s wrong?” He climbs onto the chair next to hers, using it to launch himself into her lap and her arms automatically go around his waist.

“Is that Moses?” Debbie asks, sounding surprised - she’s spoken to Ross a couple of times and last she’d heard, Moses was with him full time. This is a new development.

“Yeah, it is. One sec, I’ll just put you on speaker.”

To Moses, she adds, “Nothing’s wrong Moz, I’m just talking to Debbie. Say hi, she can hear you!”

“Hi Debbie!” he bellows and Charity’s heart warms at Debbie’s chuckle.

“Hey Moses! One minute,” she responds and promptly hangs up without even saying goodbye. Charity frowns, but Debbie’s ringing back before she can react any more than that - this time, on FaceTime and she’s smiling as she swipes to answer the call. She presses a kiss to the top of Moses’s head as she sees Debbie and Jack’s faces appear on the screen.

“Granny! Moses! Hi!” Jack beams and Charity notes how much longer his hair already is and how much older he looks than the last time she saw him. He and Debbie both look happy and healthy. Scotland is clearly good for them.

“What’s the racket in here, then?” Noah asks, coming in from the living room.

“Debbie and Jack!” Moses yells - it’s always a challenge to get him to speak at a reasonable volume, not that Charity has been trying much recently. She’s missed him so much she was letting him get away with more than she usually would.

“Yeah, come say hi if you want. They’re on FaceTime,” Charity smiles and Noah sits down next to her, joining in the conversation easily.

They speak for a while before Debbie says she needs to make dinner and they say goodbye with an agreement to speak again soon.

_June_

There’s a shift after Debbie’s visit to Emmerdale and things get steadily better and better. She knows that things can’t go back to how they were before and her children still haven’t forgiven her yet but they’re no longer as focused on Charity’s mistakes.

Moses is staying with Ross during the week and he’s with her at the weekend, enrolled for now in a primary school in Liverpool. In September, the plan is for him to go back to Connelton Primary. Noah and Charity start having dinner together at least once a week and Sarah occasionally joins them too. She’s started to forgive Charity now that things are improving with Debbie too.

Every so often they have their dinners at the pub, usually whenever Noah decides he wants fish and chips, but more often than not Charity cooks for them. She’d figured out that on the days she wasn’t working - she was officially part time now, two days a week at the B&B - and didn’t have Moses, it was too easy for her to start to wallow so Diane had suggested she found something productive to do.

She reminded her of the surprising success of the chocolate cake she’d baked with Moses during that first visit, so much so that it had become a habit and now they often bake together during his weekend visits. Diane had a surprising amount of cookbooks in her kitchen so Charity has taken to finding relatively simple recipes that she thinks Noah and Sarah would like, testing them out on Diane before she makes them for the kids.

She’d finally received the money from the sale of her father’s house and his small amount of savings that went to her and along with the money she still had from the pub, she thinks she can afford to start looking for a place of her own. She can’t get much in the way of a mortgage but she thinks she can get something small. Maybe not in Emmerdale itself but she wanted to stay as nearby as she could.

When Dan and Amelia decide to move away from the village, Charity spots an opportunity and approaches Kim Tate to ask how much she’d sell Dale Head for. It’s not quite within her budget but close enough that she can’t give up yet. She books appointments with a few more banks to try and talk her way into a bigger mortgage, with no luck. She asks Diane if she could get any more hours at the B&B but they’re still getting used to having her as well as Tracy there so for now, it’s a no-go.

One day she’s in the pub, complaining about Kim Tate to Chas and Marlon.

“You know, we never did hire anyone to replace you when you left this place,” Marlon blurts out suddenly, shifting the atmosphere to something more tense. They’ve come a long way by now, but they tend to avoid any discussion of the way they’d forced Charity to sell her shares.

She stares at him, not quite sure what to say. Surely he isn’t suggesting what she thinks he is.

“Actually, he has a point. We’ve been so busy recently we could do with another person to help out, especially now that Matty’s dropped his hours down as well. There’s definitely space in our budget to hire someone and you were good at the job, when you actually turned up on time anyway,” Chas adds. 

“Guys, as much as this would solve my problems right now, me working around alcohol all the time seems like a recipe for a disaster,” Charity points out. “Noah wouldn’t like it.” He’s good at keeping her on track, that boy. He knows how many day’s she’s been sober and he often tells her he’s proud of her.

“You’re alright being in the pub, though,” Chas replies. “Maybe you’d cope?”

Charity shrugs. “Maybe. But maybe not. I can’t know that for sure and I can’t risk it, I can’t lose the kids again.”

“When are you seeing Noah next? It’s been a while since you two have been in here for your tea,” Marlon asks, seeming a bit dejected his plan hadn’t worked out, and it’s as if a cartoon lightbulb goes off above her head.

“Marlon, that’s it!” Charity is delighted, she’s so certain that her plan will work but Marlon and Chas are just staring at her, twin looks of confusion across their faces. “You can train me to work in the kitchen and I can work here, just not behind the bar.”

The two of them burst out laughing, before noting the serious look on Charity’s face. “Charity, you want to work in the kitchen? You’ve set the fire alarm off making toast before!” Chas answers and Charity cursed the fact they’d ever lived together and Chas had years worth of cooking disasters to bring up.

“Believe it or not, I’m pretty good at following a recipe. I’ve been cooking a lot recently and I’m actually not bad at it. Train me up on your recipes or even just basic prep, I can do it.”

“You’re serious,” Marlon answers, turning to Chas. “What do you think?”

She shrugs. “It’s your kitchen.”

“Oh please Marlon, go ask Diane or Noah if you don’t believe me.”

“I s’pose I’ll trust you,” he smiles. “When do you want to start?”

They’d made arrangements and Charity had practically skipped out of the Woolpack as she called Noah to update him.

However, her real stroke of luck comes about a month later. She’s settled in surprisingly well working in the kitchen at the Woolpack and after a few shifts of only being allowed to wash up and chop vegetables, Marlon had trusted her with the starters and he’d just started to teach her the lunch menu too. She starts to do a a couple of days a week at the pub as well as her two days at the B&B and picks up extra shifts so long as they fit around her therapy and her time with the kids.

She’s on her way back to Diane’s from the Woolpack when she sees Kim Tate out the corner of her eye, yelling at someone on the phone. From the sounds of it, there’s some dodgy and clearly illegal goings-on up at the HOP. Charity nearly drops her phone in her excitement but quickly starts the recorder on it, hoping it’ll pick up enough detail to make for some useful blackmail. 

Kim hangs up not long after and Charity leaves, rushing back to Diane’s to listen to the recording and formulate a plan.

A week later, Charity goes up to Home Farm and plays the recording for Kim. “Let’s negotiate,” she says confidently, sitting down in one of their grand armchairs. “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink? I’ll have a coffee, no sugar, a splash of milk. Thanks.”

Kim actually gets her a coffee, and she already knows she’s won.

She knocks Kim down to a price she can afford. And then, just for fun, she keeps going and knocks her down by another ten grand. It means she’ll be able to start decorating sooner as well and she doesn’t need to decimate her savings to do so.

“Fine. I’ll get my lawyer to start on the paperwork. Are we done here?”

“Ring your lawyer now, and then we’ll be done. And remember, this is an urgent matter. I want it all sorted by the end of the week.”

Kim glares at her but makes the phone call anyway. The paperwork will be ready on Thursday and Dale Head is ready to move in to as soon as everything is signed and the money’s been transferred.

“And now we are done here,” Charity announces. “Thanks Kim, this has been fun. I’ll be here first thing Thursday for the keys to _my_ house.”

Charity leaves on absolute high. She’s thrilled to have her own place, to be in a position where that’s even possible, and the fact she was able to get one over on Kim Tate just made the whole thing even better. 

Later on, she tells Noah that there’s no pressure, but that one of the rooms is for him if he wants it. He says he’ll think about it and she’s even happier about that than she is about the house.

Marlon and Chas had guffawed when she told them exactly how she got Kim down to a lower price. “You really are still a Dingle,” Marlon says and Chas hugs her, inviting herself over for the housewarming.

Despite knowing it’d still be a few weeks before she could move in properly, that weekend she takes Moses along to a homeware store and lets him choose paint colours for his room. Noah decides to go with as well but says he’s still not sure about moving back in with her.

Moses had quickly chosen a yellow paint and he’d looked up at Charity hopefully when he found a dinosaur shaped nightlight. “Please can I get this mum, pleeease?”

“Of course you can babe,” she’s already checked the price on the shelf and it isn’t expensive. Even though she has more money to play with now, Moses is heavy handed and his things ended up broken more often than not so it always seemed silly to spend too much on his things. “Noah? Is there anything you like?”

“I liked the blue paint, we could go back and pick that up?” And then, seeing Charity’s reaction, he adds, “don’t go getting emotional.”

“Fine,” she chuckles and she reaches up to ruffle his hair, smiling when he twists away from her, just as she knew he would.

“Stop it!”

“Never,” she grins. “It’s my job as a mum to embarrass you in public.”

“Actually, I think it’s your job as a mum to feed us so why don’t we pay and go to McDonalds?”

“Yeah mum, McDonalds!” Moses adds, standing next to Noah and folding his arms across his chest and she has to bite back a laugh.

“Well fine then, I guess I’m outvoted today but don’t get used to it.”

Leaving Diane’s is surprisingly difficult. They’ve developed a real friendship and Charity knows that she’d never be where she is now without Diane’s support.

“I’ve gotten so used to having you pet, the house’ll feel quiet without you,” Diane says as she gives Charity a quick hug. “I’m absolutely delighted for you though, getting a place of your own!”

“Thank you, Diane. For everything, for giving me a chance when no one else did. I really owe you one. Why don’t you come round on Friday, I’ll make us dinner?” The offer was spur of the moment, Charity certainly hadn’t planned on it, but as she said it she found she liked the idea. Diane was a friend and Charity hadn’t had many of those: she wants to maintain it.

“That sounds great, I’ll be there.”

And she had. Charity had made dinner and Diane had brought flowers (and a vase - she had helped Charity pack her things so she knew she didn’t have one already and she’d called it a housewarming gift).

Just before she left, Diane had invited Charity and the kids around to hers and from then on it had become a weekly tradition. One week Charity would cook, and the next Diane would and Charity would go round with whichever combination of children she had with her at the time.

Months later, she goes for their usual Friday night dinner at Diane’s with Johnny in tow and she didn’t stop smiling the entire evening.

_July_

Once she’s moved in to the house, all her limited free time goes into decorating. First the bedrooms for the boys, and then the kitchen and living room: her room would wait until last, even if it was an awful pink colour she was sure must have been chosen by Kerry.

For a while, her life continues on like this. It’s boring in a comforting way and her therapist had suggested that having a routine in place could be helpful to control some of her more reckless behaviours that she’d found herself slipping into in the past.

Noah doesn’t officially move back in with her but he chooses furniture and gives his opinion on what she should do with the other room. He vetoes red for the living room so she gets it for her bedroom instead. He stays over quite often as well and Charity just wishes she could have offered Sarah a permanent bedroom there too. Instead, she tells Sarah that she’s welcome anytime and she can have Charity’s bed, and Charity will sleep on the sofa bed.

She buys a bunk bed for Moses. When Noah sees it and he looks at her a bit sadly. She says it’s so that Moses can have sleepovers with his friends but they both know it’s for Johnny.

A couple of weeks after she moved into the house Diane pulled her aside at work one day.

“Listen, Charity, I’m breaking Tracy’s trust by telling you this but I think you deserve to know. Vanessa and Johnny are coming back to the village next month.”

And just like that, the stability she’d managed to create for herself collapsed around her.

Charity and Tracy don’t often work together at the B&B but it happens from time to time and they’ve gotten good at being polite to each other while they’re there even though Tracy still blanks her outside of work.

She asks to borrow her phone one day, saying that she needs to text Noah and her phone is out of charge. Tracy looks at her a little suspiciously but she unlocks it and hands it over.

“Thanks,” Charity smiles and she sends a quick text to Noah just in case she checks her messages. 

_Hey Noah it’s mum, I need to go shopping after work so I’ll be a bit later than usual, call me at the B &B if you need anything._

Not even Tracy could find anything questionable about that text.

And then, feeling guilty for even having come up with this plan, she scrolls through Tracy’s contact list until she reaches the letter V. Trying not to let her hands shake, she clicks on Vanessa’s name and almost cries in relief seeing that Vanessa’s number hasn’t changed: she can still send her a text. It isn’t the first time she’s thought about contacting Vanessa but the knowledge that she’d be returning to the village soon has given her a new sense of urgency.

It takes her hours to draft a message. She deletes it and rewrites it more times than she can count and she almost throws her phone at the floor more than once.

_Hi Vanessa, it’s Charity. Heard on the grapevine you were coming back to the village soon and I’d really like to see Johnny. I’m living at Dale Head now and I have Moses every weekend and Noah stays with me a lot. I’m sober and in therapy - turns out you were right when you suggested it after the trial. I’ll take whatever you think is fair with Johnny. Please think about it and I’ll answer any questions you have. I’m sorry for everything._

Just before she sends the message, she scrolls up and cringes when she realises just how many times she’d texted Vanessa when she was drunk. They were littered with typos and pathetic attempts at excusing her actions. No wonder Vanessa hadn’t answered them or listened to her desperate attempts to see Johnny again.

Vanessa doesn’t answer her text and Charity tries to put the situation out of her mind, which works pretty well until she sees a familiar blue car driving down Main Street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this! Any thoughts on it are appreciated :)


	3. Chapter 3

_July, continued_

The following day, she finds herself at a small off-licence far away enough from Emmerdale that no one would recognise her and she buys a bottle of vodka. She’s meant to be working at the B&B but she’d called in sick and Diane hadn’t questioned it. She’d even offered to come over later if Charity needed anything.

She can’t go back home with it, if Noah saw her with it then all the progress they’d made would be gone. She decides the pub is probably her best bet - now that some of the restrictions on hospitality have been relaxed they’d been doing a roaring trade and were busier than they had been in years. Paddy should be at work and Eve at nursery - she could sneak through to the cellar and drink there.

Charity knows she’s being masochistic and she knows that the memories of Vanessa in the cellar will only make everything worse. Pulling up outside the pub and heading into the back, she unscrews the lid from the bottle and takes a sip.

It’s not good vodka and the burn of it is unfamiliar now. She takes another swig from the bottle and realises it’s not just unfamiliar but it’s also deeply unpleasant. It doesn’t help like it used to: if anything, even feels even worse now and she feels sick in the pit of her stomach.

Chas walks into the back room then, Charity still holding the vodka in her hand and Chas’s face goes from confusion to anger and back to confusion in the blink of an eye.

“Chas, please, give me a chance to explain,” Charity says and she practically throws the bottle onto the countertop, not wanting to be anywhere near it. She fills a glass with water from the tap and takes a long drink of it to rid herself of the taste of the vodka and then she risks another look at Chas, who still hasn’t said anything.

“Okay. Explain. Explain why it looks like you’ve just thrown away months of your own hard work.”

“Vanessa came to see me this morning. She isn’t going to let me see Johnny, but she wants to see Moses and Noah. She says they can go round to hers but she won’t even let me have a supervised visit with Johnny, she doesn’t want him anywhere near me. She says that he’s settled and happy and she doesn’t want to change that, so I can’t ever see him again, I’ve got to stay out their way. And then a bit later, I saw Vanessa and Johnny heading towards the cafe with this really beautiful woman with them and _she_ was holding Johnny’s hand. He smiled at her just like he used to smile at me. He’s already so much taller, he might even be taller than Moses is now. I’ve already missed too much of his life and now Vanessa says I have to miss the rest of it as well. I thought she’d come around and see that I’m different now,” Charity sobs, the pain of it all coming back.

“And then, once I’d stopped crying, I got in my car and went to an off-licence and bought myself a bottle of vodka. Then I came back here to drink it, and I _did_. I knew what I was doing and I realised pretty quickly I didn’t really want to be drinking, but I still relapsed, Chas.” Charity can’t make eye contact with Chas when she says it. “It was such a stupid mistake, but that’s just classic me, isn’t it? I can’t keep a good thing in my life, I always mess it up in the end.”

“Oh, Charity, come here,” Chas responds, opening her arms wide to her cousin and Charity is surprised by this reaction, but she goes to Chas anyway, hating how weak she feels now. At least Chas isn’t shouting at her, not yet anyway.

“You know it was stupid, I’m not going to make you feel even worse about it. I know how much you love Johnny and how much Vanessa saying you can’t see him will have hurt you,” Chas says, once Charity’s sobs against her shoulder start to subside. “You are going to have to find a way to deal with it that _doesn’t_ involve reaching for a bottle though, eh? And then you can show Vanessa that she’s wrong and get your son back.”

“What if she never changes her mind? The things I did to Vanessa, I can’t blame her for not trusting me.”

“Well then, you have to keep going anyway, Charity. Moses and Noah are so happy now, and I’ve never known you and Debbie to like each other for this long before! You’re holding down two jobs and you have your own home, you can’t lose all of that again. If the worst comes to worst, you can remind Vanessa that you’re Johnny’s mother too, you have rights and she can’t actually stop you seeing him but I _do_ think that she’ll come around.”

Chas hopes she isn’t giving Charity false hope: she knows how stubborn Vanessa is and it’s been so long now since Tracy took Johnny away and even longer still since Vanessa and Charity had been together and happy. Still, even if it’s false hope, Chas thinks it’s necessary. She doesn’t want to tell Charity that she might never regain her relationship with Johnny and risk her reaching for a bottle again. Chas has been trying hard to help Charity recently. Ever since everything happened, she’s started to realise that too often, she’d dismissed her cousin’s pain and offered her tough love instead of the actual support Charity clearly needed.

“First things first, I think you need to speak to your therapist or your AA group, you can’t ignore the fact you’ve drank even if it’s only minor. But you’ve come back from worse than this before, you can get through this too,” Chas sounds so confident that Charity can do this that she’s even starting to believe it herself. “Listen. I want to help you Charity and if this is just a one off and you tell me you’re going to deal with it properly then I won’t tell anyone else about this,” she offers and Charity considers it pretty seriously.

She shakes her head. “No. Secrets don’t stay secret around here, and Debbie and Noah can’t find this out from someone else and think I’ve kept it from them. I don’t want everyone knowing but I need to be honest with them and I’ll probably have to tell Vanessa the truth as well, if it comes down to it.”

“That sounds sensible,” Chas frowns. “When did you become the sensible one out of the two of us?”

“I think it was sometime after I hit rock bottom for the umpteenth time in my life and then stopped drinking,” she answers and laughs gently. The atmosphere lightens, and Charity wants to keep it that way. There had already been too much emotion for her liking today.

“How’s Eve?”

The second weekend Vanessa spends back in the village, Charity watches anxiously as Noah takes Moses’ hand and the pair of them head out to walk over to Tug Ghyll to visit Vanessa and Johnny. Moses had been beyond delighted when he’d found out they were back and he hadn’t stopped talking about them ever since Ross had dropped him off.

Noah is harder for her to read. He says he wants to go to Vanessa’s but he doesn’t seem especially happy about it. If Charity had to guess, she’d say that Noah probably felt abandoned by Vanessa when she left and maybe even that he blamed her for Charity’s recent relapse. Charity doesn’t want to push him, she just reminds him that she’s here if he does want to talk.

It’s only been a couple of hours when they return. Moses is as high as a kite and he doesn’t stop talking about Johnny and mummy Ness and how much fun it was. Noah is the opposite, in a worse mood now than he was before he left. Charity makes him a cup of tea and decides it’s best if gives him some time to calm down.

Moses had been chattering away for a while now, and Charity had started to zone out; there was only so much interest she could feign in his detailed explanations of the film that they’d watched but her interest is peaked when he adds “and then, and then Noah shouted at mummy Ness and she got all sad so I gave her a hug and mummy Ness said sorry even though it was Noah who shouted!”

Well. _That_ was more interesting. Charity looks across to Noah who was suddenly very interested in whatever he was looking at on his phone.

“Moses, babe, will you go play in your room for a bit? I need to talk to your brother, okay?”

“Can I take some crisps?” he asks, and Charity narrows her eyes at him. She has trouble saying no to him, still feeling guilty for basically abandoning him for months with Ross and it didn’t seem like too much of a problem until she’d realised that Moses had picked up on it and was starting to take advantage.

“You can have an apple, if you’re hungry. Now go on, upstairs for a bit.”

He runs to the stairs, totally bypassing the fruit bowl and Charity smiles a bit, deciding that that counts as successful parenting.

“I wasn’t going to push you Noah, but I need some kind of explanation here,” Charity says, then she rolls her eyes when he continues to stare at his phone as though he can’t hear her. “Oi. Put that phone down and talk to me before I take it off you. It’s not okay that you shouted at Vanessa.” At least, she’s pretty sure it isn’t. It’s hard to imagine Vanessa doing anything to deserve that.

“She was acting so _normal_ Mum, I couldn’t stand it. She was playing with Moses like she hadn’t just abandoned him for a year and then that girlfriend of hers showed up and questioned why were even there. Vanessa said it was because she still loved us and Moses was still Johnny’s brother and I lost my temper, I said she couldn’t just pretend she’s still our mum and nothing happened and that she can’t say Moses is Johnny’s brother like he’s not mine too.”

Charity wasn’t even sure where to begin with that. She knew that when he said Vanessa had abandoned Moses, what he’d really meant was that Vanessa had abandoned him, too. She just wants to make him feel better, but she doesn’t know how, not when the hurt is because Noah’s lost yet another parental figure thanks to her. She wishes she never caused this in the first place.

“Noah, it was me she left, it wasn’t you and Moses,” Charity started, but even as she said it she knew it wasn’t quite true. Vanessa had left because of Charity, but in doing so she had left Noah and Moses too. Noah was entitled to be upset about that.

“When you broke up before, me and Sarah went to see her. She said she’d always be there for us no matter what and then she wasn’t. She never even tried to talk to me or Moses and you went off the rails and Moses was in Liverpool and I was _alone_. But now she’s back and she wants to act like it’s all fine, even though she won’t even let you see Johnny and I said that it wasn’t fair either, you’re doing so much better now and you’re his mum too.”

There are tears on his cheeks and Charity wants to do nothing more than wipe them away. There are tears on her own cheeks too, she realises.

“Noah, sweetheart,” she kneels down in front of him, carefully taking the mug of tea out of his hands - it’s gone cold now anyway, she notes - and pulls him into a tight hug, stroking his back like she used to do when he was a much younger child. “You’re right, and you don’t have to forgive Vanessa or me for any of that. We both let you down and I’ve already told you that I’m sorry. I’m sure she is as well but it’s completely up to you whether or not you want to see her. You’re old enough to decide for yourself. As for Johnny, I’m going to work on that. You know how badly I want to see him but I can’t force Vanessa to change her mind.” Noah nodded his head, pulling away from Charity’s embrace.

They were both quiet for a few minutes, Noah taking a couple of deep breaths to calm himself down after his outburst.

“Thanks for talking to me Noah,” Charity said once Noah had settled again. She knows he’s back to his usual self when his only response is to roll his eyes.

“She asked about you, you know,” Noah smirks.

“Eh?”

“Vanessa. She was asking how you’d been, and if you were with anyone new,” there is a glint in his eye as he says it, clearly expecting some kind of reaction from his Mum and he’s gratified when she blushes and looks away.

“She was probably just making conversation,” Charity decides, although the idea of Vanessa asking if she was with anyone was curious.

She hasn’t dated since Vanessa but there’s been a couple of one night stands when she’d felt the need. She absolutely doesn’t count Mackenzie in that list and she feels vaguely sick when she thinks of it: she’d been so low at the time and he’d asked so many times that eventually she’d just given up on saying no and she let him take her to bed. Up until then, she’d thought she was past having sex when she didn’t really want to. With Vanessa, no matter what, there was never any kind of pressure. Not like some of her husbands who had complained when she was tired or just not in the mood. After she’d been sober for a while, she had gone out a few times with the intention of going home with someone else. She thought it might help her feel a bit more like herself and to an extent, it had worked. It was only when she’d ended up sleeping with a short women with blonde hair and a passing resemblance to Vanessa that she’d realised it probably wasn’t a healthy way to move on and since then she had stopped trying.

She knows Vanessa was the love of her life. She’ll never meet anyone who makes her feel the same way Vanessa did, that depth of feeling can’t possibly be repeated so she doesn’t even try. Having her children in her life, happy and healthy, is enough.

“Hey, why don’t you go get your brother and I’ll make popcorn and we can stick on a film?” Charity suggested, not particularly wanting to discuss Vanessa or romance. She knew Noah had only really brought it up to change the subject away from him and his feelings anyway.

“So long as you don’t let Moses pick another dumb cartoon.”

_August_

Charity goes to see Vanessa on a Tuesday evening, after her shift at the pub.

She knocks on the door at Tug Ghyll and hopes that it’s Vanessa who answers. She knows Tracy is at the B&B but that still leaves Vanessa’s Mystery Girlfriend, although according to village gossip, they don’t live together. Charity’s never spoken to the woman but she’s been holding a grudge since Noah had mentioned that she’d questioned why the kids were at Vanessa’s and it had clearly hurt him.

Her therapist would tell her it probably wasn’t the most rational reason to hate someone she’s never met but this was the least of her concerns.

It is Vanessa who opens the door, and Charity doesn’t give her a chance to speak. “We need to talk, for the sake of the kids. I’ve given you time but we can’t ignore this forever.”

“I’ve already told you, you’re not seeing Johnny.”

“Fine, I’ll keep Moses this weekend then,” Charity tries to sound strong but her voice wavers and she looks away from Vanessa’s harsh glare. “Can I come in, or do you really want to have this conversation on the doorstep?”

“Come in,” she sighed. “Johnny’s in bed anyway.”

“I wouldn’t actually going to stop you seeing Moses, by the way” is the first thing Charity says once they sit down. “He loves visiting.”

Vanessa regards her warily. “You used to be better at negotiating than this.”

“Yeah, I know. A lot has changed since you left Vanessa, it’s why I’m here. I know you think I can’t be trusted with him, but I’m his _mother_ , in case you forgot. You at least have to give me a chance to prove that you can trust me with him and I’ll be good for him. I’m just asking for a chance.”

“Charity, you went months without even trying to check on him. Why do you suddenly care now? You sent me a few drunk messages for a while and then gave up, he can’t mean that much to you,” Vanessa argues. “He’s happy, Charity. He doesn’t even ask about you anymore.”

The words hurt Charity deeply and she lets herself feel it. She deserves it, to feel a small amount of the pain she’s caused.

“No matter what you think, I never stopped caring about Johnny and I never stopped loving him. He’s my son and I’ll always love him, no matter what happens. The drunk messages stopped because I got sober, and getting sober was not easy, let me tell you. I had to leave Moses with Ross because I knew I couldn’t look after him then. I’m in therapy, I go to AA religiously and I’m on antidepressants too and I do all of that so that I _am_ good for my children, Johnny included. I never gave up on him, I was trying to be better for him,” Charity explains and she just hopes Vanessa will understand.

“It shouldn’t have even got to that point though, should it? You abandoned all of them after we broke up, it was months before you started to get sober. It’s just rinse and repeat with you, you leave them and then regret it and fix things but it’s only a matter of time before you abandon them again and I won’t let you hurt Johnny like that for a second time,” Charity knows Vanessa isn’t wrong. Messing up and making amends has been her pattern for years and she doesn’t know how she can convince her to change her mind now.

Charity wants to say that she didn’t abandon Johnny, he was taken from her and it was probably one of the reasons she’d spiralled out of control as fast as she had. She wants to tell Vanessa that it’s not just her who’s abandoned their children recently and that Noah’s still hurt by the way she had left him. It might get her point across but it’d also antagonise Vanessa and she doesn’t want to do that.

“All I’m asking for, Vanessa, is a chance to be in his life. If it looks like I’m relapsing or going off the rails somehow then you can keep him from me and I won’t argue. Do you want to do a damn breathalyser test to believe I’m really sober? Get you a signed letter from my therapist saying that I’m telling you the truth? Ask Chas and Diane for references about how I am at work? Whatever I can do to prove it, I will. I’m not being unfair wanting to see my own son and I’m not going to give up on it either, you have no right to keep me from him forever.” She’s breathing heavily and a few tears escape.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to cry. I’ll get out your hair, but will you at least consider letting me see him, please? I’m not actually working this week, I’ve taken time off to spend with Moses during his summer holidays so you can text or ring me anytime and I’ll answer anything, if it’ll help.”

She doesn’t think there’s anything more she can do or say right now and Vanessa not even giving her the slightest of chances hurts. She just wants to go home and get a cuddle from Moses.

“Bye Vanessa,” she says before almost running out of Tug Ghyll and back home.

Later that evening, she has Moses in her lap and she’s pretty sure he’s mostly asleep but she doesn’t want to take him up to bed just yet, not when he’s being so affectionate.

There’s a knock at the door and Moses jumps slightly in her arms. “It’s just the door, I’ll be right back baba,” she kisses the top of his head and gently moves him towards the centre of the sofa so she can move. She thinks it’s probably Diane, who likes to turn up with no warning and have a cup of tea every so often.

She opens the door and isn’t sure how to react when she sees it’s Vanessa there.

“Can I come in?” Vanessa asks and Charity nods her head.

“Of course! Can I get you a drink? Tea, coffee? I don’t have anything stronger. Come in, sit down,” she gestures inside. “I just need to take Moses up, I’ll be a minute.”

He’s already fallen asleep again on the sofa and she scoops him up as gently as she can manage, carrying him up to his bed. She makes sure that he’s tucked in properly and kisses him on the forehead. “Sleep well baba. I love you,” she whispers and switches on his dinosaur nightlight, leaving his door open just a crack. He doesn’t like to wake up in complete darkness.

Steeling herself, she heads back to Vanessa.

“So, what can I do for you?”

“I’ve been thinking about some of the things you said, and we can talk. I want more of an explanation, and then I’ll think about letting you see Johnny,” Vanessa states.

“Of course! I already said I’d answer whatever questions you had, what do you want to know?” Charity replies eagerly, trying not to let herself get too excited just yet. Vanessa’s not agreed, far from it, but she’s letting her explain and it has to count for something.

“I’m not sure where to start. You’re really sober?”

Charity nods. “I am. I have been since February, more or less. I relapsed once, a few weeks ago but I’ve done all the right things since then, I spoke to people about it and I’m as sure as I can be that it won’t happen again.” If Vanessa does the maths and realises that her relapse coincides with her return to the village, she doesn’t comment on it.

“Okay. That’s what Noah said, and Diane and Chas as well actually. You’ve got some actual support here now, seems like. It’s one of the things that made me think I might be being too harsh, if Chas of all people is so fiercely on your side. Diane was a surprise as well, actually,” Vanessa tells her and Charity glows a little with that knowledge. She hadn’t realised they’d been defending her to Vanessa.

“Diane’s been wonderful. She let me move in with her before I bought this place and she’s the one that encouraged me to get help in the first place,” Charity explains, knowing that even villagers who’d been here the entire time still found their friendship bizarre.

“There’s nothing dodgy about the house, by the way. My dad died a few months ago and left me his house and I still had the money from when I sold the pub. I negotiated Kim Tate down a bit, and here we are. Totally legit,” she adds, her mind having flashed back to the mess she’d caused when she tried to buy Tenant House from Jai. “Well, I may have negotiated Kim down a bit, but that was _her_ wrongdoing, not mine.” 

“I’m sorry to hear about your dad,” Vanessa replies genuinely. She almost sounds caring.

She shrugs “It’s fine. You know as well as I do we weren’t close, he’s not much of a loss. His money letting me buy this house is the only decent thing he’s ever done for me.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever known you to be this upfront and honest,” Vanessa looks at her like she’s a stranger, rather than she woman she almost married.

“Debs has said that too,” Charity laughs awkwardly. “I guess that’s what six months of therapy will do to a person. I knew it was my absolute last chance and if I didn’t stop I’d have probably drank myself to death.”

Vanessa pauses and Charity’s nerves increase again.

“Why did you do it in the first place, Charity? Why did you kiss him? Why ruin us like that?”

Charity is silent for a moment.

“It was a stupid mistake, I can’t justify it. I was heartbroken that day when you didn’t come home and I started thinking it meant you didn’t love me anymore, I even started thinking you’d found someone else. Especially because we’d hardly been speaking by then, not like we used to. Anyway, he crashed his car into mine - I know Tracy said it was an affair but it wasn’t, you have to believe me on that. That was the first time I met him. He started flirting with me and somehow we ended up kissing, that’s all it was. I was stupid but there were never any actual feelings, it was one idiotic mistake that I wished I could take back as soon as it happened.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

Charity pulls her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and avoids making eye contact. “Yes. Not until months later and I was at such a low point then, Ness,” she doesn’t mean for the nickname to slip out, it feels too familiar for this conversation. “He’d already tried to get me into bed so many times and I kept telling him no and one day I just... I gave up, I agreed. I’d already alienated my family and my kids and I think I just wanted to feel something. If it makes you feel any better, it was awful. All it did was make me feel worse and used and I hated myself even more for it.” She lets herself cry, not even bothering to try and hide it.

“How would _that_ make me feel better, Charity? To know you felt that low and you slept with him because you _gave_ _up_? After everything you’ve been through, what on earth happened to your self-respect?” Charity looks up and thinks there might be tears in Vanessa’s eyes as well.

“I can’t do this right now. I’m still going to think about letting you see Johnny, okay?” she says, then let’s herself out.

On Friday evening, Charity’s at work at the pub, covering a shift last minute for Marlon who’d wanted to go out with Rhona. Noah’s at home watching Moses until she returns and she leaves them watching a film and with money for a takeaway so she doesn’t feel too guilty asking Noah to babysit.

She turns as she hears the kitchen door open, expecting it to be Chas with a new food order but instead it’s Vanessa, stood awkwardly in the doorway staring at her in disbelief.

“You work in the _kitchen_?” She’d asked, at the same moment as Charity misjudged the angle of the knife she was using and sliced her finger rather than the carrot she was meant to be chopping.

“Fuck,” she whispers as her blood drips onto the chopping board and she registers the pain. “Can you pass me the first aid box? It’s in the cupboard on your right.”

Vanessa grabs it quickly and passes it over to Charity. “Do you need a hand?”

“It’s fine, it’s not the first time I’ve cut myself working here and it won’t be the last. I’m used to it,” Charity answered as she made quick work of cleaning the wound and sticking a plaster on it. “Damn, we’ll need more plasters soon too,” she adds, noting there’s just two left. She makes a quick note of it on her order list and turns back to Vanessa.

“Sorry. What can I do for you?”

“I‘ve been thinking about it, and I’ll let you see Johnny. I think they should be supervised visits though, at least to start so you could come over with Moses and Noah on Saturday if you’d like?”

Charity’s heart is pounding in her chest. Finally, _finally_ she gets to see her son again. “I’ll have to check with Noah. He, uh, he was a little unsure about visiting after last time,” Charity explains warily, not willing to betray Noah’s confidence but equally not wanting to do anything to prevent her from seeing Johnny.

“Oh, I’m not upset with Noah. He’s more than welcome,” Vanessa replies easily and Charity bites back a groan.

“No, Ness,” she tries to explain it gently as possibly, but she _knows_ there’s nothing easy about being rejected by your child. “He was upset with you, for leaving. That’s why he’s not sure.”

“Oh. Well, that’s fair I guess,” Vanessa’s voice is shaky, her eyes glassy and Charity is desperate to comfort her somehow.

“He’ll come around,” she offers eventually. “He did with me, and he was much more upset with me. It just takes time.”

“Right,” Vanessa agreed. “Well, let me know and we’ll see you tomorrow then.” She turns to leave. “Oh, one more thing. I told you the other day that Johnny was happy without you, that he doesn’t even ask about you? I was lying, and I’m sorry for that. Johnny’s really missed you.”

Noah decides against seeing Vanessa tomorrow but offers her a genuine smile when Charity tells him that she’s seeing Johnny. They’d arranged to meet at Vanessa’s at midday and she’d offered to make them some lunch.

Charity spends the entire morning stressing over what to wear and throws a pair of trainers vaguely near Noah when he laughs at her for it. In the end, she goes with a new shirt she’d bought recently and an old pair of jeans, comfy but she still looks good in them. She’d toyed with the idea of wearing the cardigan that Vanessa had bought her for her birthday - the softness of it was still reassuring and she often put it on when she went to therapy or her AA meetings. Still, for this occasion, it seems too significant.

Under her shirt, she wears Vanessa’s engagement ring on a chain. It definitely wouldn’t do for Vanessa to see that but she still likes to have it on her.

She holds on tightly to Moses’s hand as they walk across the village to Tug Ghyll, resisting the urge to run away. She wants to see Johnny more than anything but she’s deathly afraid of it going badly.

They arrive quicker than she’d like and her heart is pounding as Moses bangs loudly on the door. “Hi!” he yells as Vanessa lets them in and he wraps his arms around her waist in a hug. “Missed you, mummy Ness.”

Charity is watching them, a small smile on her face but her attention is diverted when she hears Johnny yell her name. He runs towards her and she drops to her knees as his entire body barrels into hers and she wraps her arms around him. He’s taller and stronger than she remembers and she relishes in how tight his grip is on her. “I missed you so much, Johnny, I love you” she whispers, pulling away from him just enough that she can see his face. She traces her finger down from his forehead down to his chin, as if to memorise what he looks like in front of her.

“I missed you too mummy Charity, don’t go away again please,” he’s says, looking at her seriously.

She shakes her head. “I won’t ever leave you again Johnny, I promise.” He leans back into her, his small arms wrapped around her and his head resting on her shoulder.

Charity could barely believe how lucky she was, to have Johnny still love her so easily. She promises herself, not for the first time, that she wouldn’t lose this again.

Looking up, she sees Vanessa watching them with an uncomfortable look on her face. Charity wasn’t quite sure how to interpret it but that’s an issue for later, she decides. She has Johnny, he loves her, and that’s all that matters right now.

The oven alarm beeped loudly, startling Charity into dropping her arms from around Johnny.“That’s lunch ready,” Vanessa had announced and Johnny loosened his grip on Charity, letting their hug end but taking hold of her hand.

“We’re having fish finger sandwiches! Mummy let me choose and I said fish fingers because it’s your favourite” Johnny tells her gleefully, pulling Charity towards the table. “Sit next to me,” he demands and Charity does so, feeling relieved when Moses takes the seat on her other side.

Johnny somehow managed to shuffle his chair even closer to hers. “Am I going to live with you again?” he asks Charity, Vanessa clearly overhearing his words as she lets a fork clatter to the floor.

“No babe, you live here with your mummy and Auntie Tracy. But you can always visit me and I’ll come here to visit you, so long as your mummy says it’s okay,” Charity explains gently, wishing beyond belief she could have answered yes. _Yes, you’ll always have a home with me, I even have a bed for you ready and waiting._ If only.

He frowns. “But _you’re_ my mummy too. You and Moses and Noah can live here and Auntie Tracy can have your house!”

Charity chuckles, picturing Tracy’s face if Johnny suggested that to her.

“Johnny, I love you very much, no matter where you live. We can’t all live together like we used to anymore because I did a stupid thing that hurt your mum, so that’s why you live here with her and we’re not all together.”

“Okay,” he says, having thought about it for a minute. “Maybe later, then.”

Charity just laughs, a little breathlessly. What can anyone say to that?

At that moment Vanessa makes her way to the table and passes the boys their plates first, then hers and Charity’s and she sits down opposite Charity at the small table.

“Thank you, this looks great,” Charity says and Vanessa gave her a funny look.

“It’s a fish finger sandwich Charity, but you’re welcome.”

Luckily, the boys managed to keep the conversation flowing easily as they all ate. Charity and Vanessa were awkward and stilted with each other and Charity tries hard not to stare at Vanessa every time she smiles at something one of the boys said.

Not long after they finished, the boys asked if they could play upstairs and both women had nodded. “Go on then. We’ll just be down here if you need anything.”

“Tea?” Vanessa offers, needing to say anything to break the silence that had settled over the room once they could no longer hear the boys clattering up the stairs.

“That’d be great. Thanks. Do you want me to tidy up or anything, I can do the washing up?”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll just stick it in the dishwasher later,” Vanessa replies but Charity ignores her and collects the plates from the table anyway.

“I can load the dishwasher at least.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Soon enough, the drinks were made, the table is clean again, and the awkwardness between them is palpable.

“Should we sit down, put the TV on maybe?” Charity suggests. She absolutely does not want to watch TV but they need something to diffuse the tension.

There’s an old film playing on BBC and Charity tries to pay attention and figure out the storyline but her mind couldn’t focus on anything but Vanessa.

“This is -”

“Should we -”

The two women speak at the same time, and they both laugh.

“We should talk,” Vanessa says decisively. “We need to be able to get along for the kids.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She’s desperate to ask Vanessa a thousand questions about how she and Johnny have been since leaving the village, but resists the urge. She doesn’t want to pressure Vanessa, and she knows most of it is none of her business anyway. There’s one thing that she needs to know, though.

“Vanessa, your - your health. Everything’s still okay, right?” It’s a thought that’s plagued Charity’s nightmares for months, that Vanessa’s cancer could have returned and she wouldn’t have known.

Vanessa smiles. “Yeah, I’m absolutely fine. I had a routine check up a couple of months ago, there were absolutely nothing to be concerned about. I’ve actually taken up running, so if anything I’m probably in better shape than I was before.”

“I’m so happy to hear that Vanessa,” Charity replies. “So, so happy.”

They’re both quiet for a long moment and Vanessa seems to be deep in thought about something.

“Physically, anyway,” she adds. “My physical health is fine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Charity, you’ve been so honest about everything since I got back and I think I owe it to you to be honest back.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Charity says immediately, but Vanessa shakes her head.

“I want to. I don’t feel pressured and you deserve to know this. I know you’ve been blaming yourself for our breakup but I wasn’t faultless,” Vanessa starts.

“No, Vanessa, it was me who -”

“Stop, Charity let me speak,” Vanessa’s clearly nervous and Charity goes silent.

“You weren’t wrong when you said I’d been acting differently. That we hadn’t been communicating with each other, or rather that _I_ hadn’t been speaking to you and I can’t be mad at you for picking up on that. You came to the totally wrong conclusion, but you were right about how I was acting at least,” Vanessa admits and Charity goes to speak but Vanessa holds her hand up.

“I’d been at my mum’s for a while and it was fine at first but the longer I was there and away from you and the kids, the worse things started to get. I started having panic attacks for practically no reason. There was one time you didn’t answer your phone and I convinced myself that something bad had happened to Johnny or to you and it took me so long to calm down that mum called 999. I ignored it for a long time, I didn’t want to face the fact that something was wrong and I had no idea how to tell you about it. That’s when I stopped talking to you as much. I ended up being diagnosed with PTSD, they said it was probably a delayed reaction to everything that had happened with Pierce. I’m in therapy for it now and I have coping strategies. I can deal with it a lot better now than I did at the time.”

She looks up at Charity. “The worst part of all of it is that I think I knew all along you’d pick up on it. It was easier with Tracy and Rhona, they’ve never been able to read me half as well as you have. But I knew you’d notice and instead of talking to you or being honest, I just avoided you. I’m sorry for that, Charity. So like I said, you can stop blaming yourself entirely for our breakup.”

Charity didn’t know how to respond. It pained her to know how much Vanessa had been struggling and she hadn’t even realised.

“We’ve both made mistakes, Charity. We both hurt each other and I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” Charity chokes out. “Vanessa, you were _ill._ I should have noticed.”

“I kept it from you, deliberately. When you did question it, I blamed things on the cancer. That’s not your fault.”

“I don’t know what to say, Ness. I’m so sorry you’ve been going through all of this.”

“It’s not like either of us have had an easy year, is it?” Vanessa responds.

“I guess not,” Charity agrees. “I can’t help but wish we’d actually talked about all of this at the time. Things might not have gotten so bad if we had. We were meant to be getting married, we should have been able to talk to each other.”

Vanessa hums, but doesn’t comment.

“So where do we go from here? How do you want things to work with the kids?” Charity asks, sensing a change in subject is probably for the best.

“I have no intention of stopping you from seeing Johnny, it was wrong of me to do that in the first place. He was so happy to see you today and I trust you with him. We can figure out schedules and stuff later, maybe in line with when you have Moses so the two of them get to spend time together?”

Charity can only stare in amazement. “You’ll let me have him overnight? You weren’t even sure about me seeing him without you there.”

“I was wrong. I know that safe with you, I have concerns about you being with Johnny. I know how much you love all your kids, irrelevant of how things are between us.”

“Thanks,” Charity replies. “S’pose it’ll be nice for you to be able to have your girlfriend over without Johnny here. I’m not going to volunteer to look after Tracy too, though,” she laughs lightly, hoping she isn’t overstepping the mark.

“Oh, we broke up. Her job and her life is in Bradford and neither of us wanted to do long distance forever. I think we’d known it was coming, ever since I came back here.”

“I’m sorry,” Charity replies, trying not to seem nonchalant about the fact Vanessa is single again. “I’m sorry for even asking actually, it’s not really my business. I’m single, by the way,” she adds and then cringes. “I just mean, for the boys. There isn’t anyone, but if ever there was someone and I was going to introduce them, I’d tell you first.”

“Right, of course. Me too,” Vanessa answers and Charity curses herself for bringing up this topic at all. The atmosphere is so tense again now and she can’t stand it. 

Charity looks at Vanessa for a moment. She’s so casually beautiful and it makes Charity ache for what she’s lost. “Do you think there’s a chance we could ever be friends again?” She’s not sure why she asks, fairly certain she won’t like the answer.

Vanessa looks back at her. “We were never really friends, Charity,” she replies and Charity’s heart sinks, even if it’s what she had expected. “But we could try, I suppose. We’ve both hurt each other and made mistakes, there needs to be forgiveness on both sides. I don’t know if we’ll ever be friends, but maybe we could be something. I want us to get along, at least for the kids sake. Before my dad left, my parents fought all the time and I hated it - I don’t want that for them.”

Charity’s a little stunned that Vanessa is even willing to try. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s what’s best for the kids. But Ness, you don’t need my forgiveness. You’ve done nothing wrong, but if you want me to say it, then I forgive you. Completely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things start to get better from here on out. There's 2/3 chapters left of this, depending on how I end up splitting it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This entire chapter is just pure fluff

_September_

In the build up to Johnny’s 6th birthday, they ask him what he wants to do to celebrate. He thinks about it for a while, then announces he wants to go to the beach. “Me, you, mummy Charity, Moses and Noah, Sarah, Auntie Tracy and baby Frankie. And I want fish n chips and doughnuts!”

“It might rain, it might not be sunny like it was last time we went to the beach,” Vanessa warns, but Johnny is determined.

“That’s okay! We got coats!”

And so, they’d taken three cars and driven up to Bridlington the weekend of Johnny’s birthday. They’re lucky with the weather: it isn’t especially warm but the skies are clear and that’s as good as it gets for Yorkshire in September.

Johnny and Moses drag Noah and Sarah to the sea the second they get to the beach, leaving the adults to set up their many picnic blankets and the folding chairs they brought with family.

The conversation between them is light and easy. It hadn’t been immediate but after several awkward lunches and days out with the boys, they’ve become something akin to friends although they don’t spend any time together alone. Still, things have improved steadily and when Johnny wants a family day out rather than a party with his friends for his birthday, Vanessa doesn’t mind the idea at all. Being away from the village, she’d forgotten how easily Charity makes her laugh and now that everything is out in the open, she feels lighter. Johnny’s happier too, which is the biggest thing.

Even things between Charity and Tracy were better now that Vanessa had finally opened up to Tracy about her own mental health and her own perceived faults that, in part, lead the break-up. Baby Frankie gets passed between them, and even Charity ends up holding her for a while when Vanessa leaves to find a loo and Tracy wants a break. She pulls faces at Frankie, pleased when it makes her giggle loudly. “Yeah, you’re pretty cute, aren’t you kiddo? And that’s weird because your grandad is _Cain_ but you clearly haven’t inherited any of his genes, you lucky thing.”

“Okay, it’s weird that you seem to be enjoying holding her now. Give me my baby back,” Tracy says, watching the interaction.

“I don’t hate babies, you know, I’m not _that_ evil.”

“You’re not evil at all, and why are we talking about you hating babies anyway?” Vanessa asks having made her way back to the group.

“Your sister’s being mean to me,” Charity announces and Vanessa laughs. “And I didn’t deserve it, I was just being nice to Frankie! I said she _didn’t_ look like she was related to Cain, it was a compliment.”

“Oh yeah, you’re basically an angel,” Vanessa answers, sarcasm strong in her voice.

“And don’t you forget it,” Charity responds, surprising even herself when she turns and winks at Vanessa. She’s usually pretty in control of her actions around her, not wanting to do anything that would break the fragile peace they’ve found.

Vanessa’s cheeks colour lightly, and Charity can’t help but to read into it. Every so often, it feels like they’re slipping into old habits and find themselves joking and flirting. They’ve hugged once, and both held on just a little too long. She’s happy to just be friends with Vanessa, hell, she’s still amazed that Vanessa’s even willing to be friends and she doesn’t want to ruin things again by hoping for too much.

Not too long later, the kids rejoin them after finally getting too cold in the sea. They wrap up in towels and Johnny climbs up into Charity’s lap. “Did you have fun, kid?” she asks Johnny who nods enthusiastically, then yawns. _That’s_ _fair_ , Charity thinks, it had been an early morning wake up call for them all and he’d been running around and swimming for an hour.

Vanessa looks around and then laughs a little. “How come I’m the only one sitting alone?”

She has a point. Tracy has Frankie, Johnny is curled up with Charity and Moses is laying down, his head in Sarah’s lap and his feet resting on Noah.

“Guess you’re just no one’s favourite,” Charity teases, and she misses the glint that appears in Noah’s eyes.

He moves Moses’s feet and stands up, then perches down heavily next to Vanessa, on the edge of her chair despite the fact there’s clearly no space for him. He’s halfway between falling over onto the sand or completely into Vanessa but before either of things happen, the entire chair tips sideways and both Noah and Vanessa land on the sand.

Moses cheers and races over to Noah, throwing his little body over his brother’s and Johnny joins in a second later, once he realises there’s fun to be had. Charity laughs so hard she nearly cries and fumbles for her phone to take a picture of the carnage

“Oh yeah, just laugh. I’m totally fine, don’t bother helping me up,” Vanessa complains lightheartedly. Charity offers her hand to Vanessa and pulls her back to her feet, but she misjudges the amount of strength required and Vanessa ends up losing her balance again as her body pitches forward into Charity.

Charity reacts quickly, grabbing onto her waist to hold her steady.

They stand like that for a moment until they’ve stopped laughing and then Charity realises just how close they’re standing: practically every part of their body is in contact and she steps backwards quickly.

“Thanks,” Vanessa says a little breathlessly, her cheeks adorably pink.

“You’re welcome,” Charity responds quickly. “Couldn’t exactly leave you there, you need to drive one of the cars home.”

“I could have driven,” Noah pipes up.

“Yeah, try asking that again when you’ve passed your test, kid,” Charity snarks.

“Who wants lunch?” Vanessa interrupts. “Fish and chips everyone?”

Everyone says yes and Charity ends up volunteering to go with Vanessa to collect them. None of the kids have gotten changed back into their clothes yet, and Tracy was using Frankie as an excuse not to move.

The two of them had ambled up to the fish and chip shop, chatting amicably the whole way. “Thanks for today,” Vanessa says at one point. “Johnny’s loving it. Me too, actually.”

Charity smiles. “No thanks needed, I just want to see him happy. And you.”

“I’m glad we ended up here, you know?”

Charity knows what Vanessa is saying, but she can’t resist an easy joke. “What, Brid in September? You need to get out more, Ness.”

“Not here, specifically. Us being friends, and the kids happy.”

_Friends_ , Charity reminded herself. _Friends_ , nothing more. “Me too, Ness. I couldn’t be happier about it,” she smiles.

The conversation turns back to lighter topics while they wait in line for their food. At one point, Charity bumps her shoulder into Vanessa to get her attention and if, after that, she ends up standing a bit closer, she pretends it’s not deliberate.

They share out the bags evenly to carry their food back to the beach and the kids practically pounce as soon as they’re in sight. Johnny and Moses run away with a portion of fish and chips each, cheering at their apparent victory and already scoffing down chips. Noah takes a bag off each of them, carrying it the rest of the way back to where they were sitting. “It’s my good deed for today,” he explains. “And my way of making it up to Ness, for knocking her down into the sand and totally messing up her hair.”

They laugh, and Vanessa lifts one of her hands to her hair self consciously. She tries to smooth it out but Noah is right. There’s sand in it and it must look awful, she thinks to herself.

“Oh god Noah, I only just washed it!” she moaned but that only made Noah laugh more.

“You still look beautiful,” Charity says without really thinking, and then, as Noah and Vanessa both turn to look at her in surprise, “but yeah your hair is a disaster right now.”

“Smooth, mum,” Noah had laughed but he shut up pretty quickly when Charity glared at him.

“I’m not trying to be smooth, thank you Noah.”

“Can you all just stop arguing and hurry up with the food please!” Sarah calls over to them. Charity is glad to note they’re pretty close now and she’s hoping that being around the rest of them would diffuse the anxiety she’s started to feel. She isn’t quite sure what she’s doing, flirting so obviously with Vanessa.

Luckily for Charity, they get distracted by food and everyone is quiet while they eat.

Johnny sits on her lap again after they’ve eaten and she turns to tease Vanessa. “Don’t go getting jealous again.”

Vanessa rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I’ll try to contain my envy.”

“Mum, can we go swimming again?”

“If Noah or Sarah go with you too, yeah,” Charity answers easily. She’s fairly certain Noah will go without a fuss.

He tugs at her hand. “No, I want you to come swimming.”

“Well, it is your birthday so I guess I can manage that.” She’s worn her bikini under her clothes anyway, half because she’d been hoping they might be lucky and she could sunbathe, but mainly because she knew the kids would drag her out into the water. She’s not at all upset it’s the latter. “Anyone else going to join me and Johnnybobs?” she asks as she stands up, quickly pulling her shirt and trousers off and leaving them in a neat pile on her chair.

Moses decides he wants to go as well and the pair of them both grab one of her hands each and Charity barely has time to shout bye to the others before they’re pulling her towards the water.

She doesn’t notice the way Vanessa stared at her as she stripped off to her bikini, or realise that she’s being watched as she walks away.

It isn’t as cold as she’d expected and even if it was, she doesn’t think she’d mind. A bit of coldness would be worth it to see her youngest sons both so happy. They’re giggling furiously as she splashes them with water and they throw a ball around.

At some point, she looks up and sees that Vanessa is in the shallow part of the water. She has her trousers rolled up, and her phone is in her hand, pointed towards Charity and the boys.

“Boys, shall we go see mummy?” Charity asks, pointing vaguely in Vanessa’s direction. They nodded and then started swimming back until they could stand up in the water again.

“Hey!” she’d called over once they’d gotten close enough. “Did you miss us already?”

“That, and I thought you might like this,” Vanessa replied, handing Charity a towel. Despite the water not being quite cold as she’d expected, it was still September and walking around in a bikini wasn’t exactly sensible.

“Nice thinking, Batman. Thanks,” Charity answered as she pulls the towel around her shoulders, starting to dry herself off quickly as they walk back over to their patch of sand that Noah’s now started to dig a moat around.

“Moses, Johnny, come on,” Vanessa calls over to the boys who have started to wrestle. “We’re going to get doughnuts!”

“Oh, that’ll work,” Charity laughs, watching as she’s proved right a moment later and the boys run to catch up with them.

“I want five,” Johnny announces. “Please and thank you.”

“You can have one,” Vanessa replies, laughing.

“Four.”

“Johnny, this isn’t a negotiation.”

“Four doughnuts and I’ll let you have one, so that means I eat three.”

Charity is almost cackling by now. “He’s being polite at least, and plus he’s got some good maths skills there. He even offered to share!”

“Mummy Charity, buy me the doughnuts please. You’re my favourite,” he smiles at her sweetly and Charity isn’t sure if she’s impressed or concerned that he’s already trying to manipulate people. 

“Nice try kiddo, but your mum’s right. You’ll never eat that many.”

“Finally some support, thank you Charity,” Vanessa grumbles.

Charity is still laughing intermittently when they get back to the group.

“What’s so funny?” Tracy asks.

“Oh, just Johnny. He’s going to be a great businessman when he’s older.”

“Oi, Sarah, that’s my chair! And where are my clothes?” Charity frowned.

“Looks to me like it’s my chair now. I put your stuff into your bag.”

“Right, thanks,” Charity replies, making quick work of throwing her clothes back on, as well an oversized hoody she’d brought with to keep warm. “Guess I’d better go buy some doughnuts before Johnny stages a mutiny,” she whispers to Vanessa.

“I’ll come with,” Vanessa offers and for the second time that day, the two of them set off together.

It’s a little unusual, how much time they’ve spent today just the two of them. Charity likes it.

“So, how’s everything going at work? We don’t really get much time to talk properly, just the two of us,” Vanessa asks. Charity hadn’t thought that _time to talk properly, just the two of us_ , had been something Vanessa wanted and for once, she’s pretty delighted that apparently she might have been wrong.

“Oh, both jobs are going pretty well. Diane’s let me switch my shifts around so I can get Moses to and from school. He’s loving being back, by the way, he’s been so excited finally getting to see his friends again. We’re still trying to come up with something that’ll work when I’m at the pub. The easy solution would be to just swap my days, take on a day or two at the weekend instead but I don’t really want to give up that time with the kids, you know? Anyway how about you, how are you managing to not kill Jamie when you have to work with him everyday?”

Vanessa frowns. “You know, sometimes I forget he even works with us. He’s hardly ever there, which yeah, I’m pretty glad about. Work’s good though, we’re building up a bigger client list again so the business is doing well. Thank god for so many people buying pets in lockdown. And we should should compare our schedules, there’s no point in us both struggling with the school run twice a day.”

“That’s a good idea, thanks Ness. Anyway, how’s everything else? Shouldn’t you be due a check-up soon?”

“Yeah, I’m booked in for a scan in a few weeks time and assuming everything’s still good, I won’t even need the check-ups as often.”

“I could give you a lift to the hospital, if you’d like?” Charity offers. “Unless you’ve already sorted it.”

“No, that’d be nice, thank you Charity. I usually drive myself but the appointments tend to make my anxiety flare up, it’d be nice to have you there,” Vanessa replies. “How’s your stuff going?”

“Manpreet says I’m a model patient, believe it or not. She said we could think about lowering the dosage of my antidepressant soon.”

Vanessa smiled at her brightly. “That’s incredible news, you should be so proud of yourself Charity. _I’m_ proud of you.”

She ignores the feeling she gets when Vanessa says she’s proud of her. “I’m pretty happy with it, yeah,” she answers. “Just wish I’d done it all sooner, instead of acting like I did and coming so close to losing my family forever. I knew I had to change before I did lose everything.”

Vanessa looks at her, a small smile on her face. “Well, you definitely have them back now. I don’t think you’ve actually changed that much though,” Vanessa says softly and Charity turns to look at her incredulously. “Okay, yeah, you usually make better choices now and you’re more honest and less impulsive -”

“Ouch Vanessa, don’t hold back,” Charity interrupts, not sure she wants to hear a laundry list of all her failures as a person.

“What I’m trying to say is that before everything, I used to feel so lucky to be in your life and to be loved by you. I’m _still_ so happy you’re Johnny’s mum as well, you’re better than anyone else at making him laugh and you make him feel safe. Yeah, you probably could have been better at showing it sometimes, but I was never in doubt about how much you loved the kids, or me. You’d have always done anything for them, and that part of you hasn’t changed. You just believe it about yourself now, and you let other people see it as well.”

“Oh, stop it,” Charity whines, not sure how to respond to this level of sincerity or the mention of their life together.

“C’mon then, the doughnuts await,” Vanessa grabs her hand, pulling her towards the shop on the seafront that they’d passed earlier. Charity hardly dares to breathe. She isn’t sure if Vanessa had intentionally held her hand and she didn’t want her to let go.

The two of them look up at the menu. “What do you reckon, a bag of 15? Noah’ll want a few, right?”

“Yeah, he will,” Charity agrees. “That boy’s going to eat me out of house and home one of these days.”

They order, and Charity grabs her phone from her pocket and quickly pays before Vanessa can. “You got the fish and chips,” Charity shrugs. She’d figured it was her turn to pay anyway, but she also knows that Vanessa’s purse usually ends all the way at the bottom of her bag and she doesn’t want Vanessa trying to find it. She’d need both hands for that and the price of a bag of doughnuts was more than worth it to hold Vanessa’s hand for a bit longer.

She takes the bag, offering a quick thanks to the shop assistant and they head back towards the rest of the group. Once back on the beach, Vanessa swings their joined hands between them a couple of times and squeezes lightly once before dropping her hand. “We’re back!” she calls over to the others happily.

Charity, deciding to let Sarah keep the chair, flops down onto the sand next to Noah, and she opens up the bag of doughnuts and placed it in the middle of the group. Moses and Johnny grab two each, one in each of their little hands, looking absolutely triumphant.

The others all take one as well, and when Sarah frowns and says something about how many calories she’s had today, it’s Vanessa who tells her that she absolutely doesn’t need to worry about her weight, but if she is then calorie counting isn’t always the healthiest of ways to do that. She asks if she wants to join her when she goes running in a morning and Sarah just grimaces. “I’ll just have the doughnut, thanks.”

Charity isn’t expecting it when Noah turns around and asks Ness if he could go running with her sometimes. Despite his failed attempt at joining the army, something Charity still feels guilty for, he’d kept up some parts of his fitness regime.

“Yeah, of course you can,” Vanessa answers and Charity can see how pleased she is at the idea. It hasn’t been easy for her to regain Noah’s trust on her return to the village and she’s always happy when there’s any hints of him forgiving her. Charity knows the feeling well.

She zones out of the conversation a little, getting distracted as she just looks at Vanessa. Her hair is longer now and she looks healthy in a way that delights Charity. Until she’d come back to the village, Charity had tended to picture Vanessa the way she’d looked when she left. Ill, underweight, tired. Still beautiful, but so obviously affected by all the chemo and operations that it made Charity ache and want to protect her. Her clothes no longer hang off her, having regained the weight she’d lost due to chemo and there weren’t the same constant dark circles under her eyes anymore. Vanessa smiles at something Moses is saying and it makes Charity smile too. For a long time, Vanessa’s smiles had been so forced. She hadn’t wanted the boys to know just how bad things got so she’d painted on a smile and pretended it didn’t hurt her when they hugged a little too tight. The boys hadn’t picked up on it but Charity had, every single time.

Vanessa’s gaze moves around the circle and Charity realises she’s been caught staring. She blushes lightly and turns away but as Vanessa starts up a conversation with Tracy about Johnny’s first birthday party, she ends up resuming her examination of Vanessa. She’s just so beautiful and Charity could watch her speak all day, but a few of their sentences penetrate through Charity’s consciousness.

“Wait, did you just say there was a _clown stripper_ at Johnny’s first birthday party? In the pub?” She thought back - she’d owned the pub by then and she isn’t quite sure how she’d not been aware of something as ridiculous as this happening. And while she always wishes she’d been around for more of Johnny’s life, she’s fairly glad she wasn’t there for the clown stripper, being afraid of clowns as she is. Hiding behind Marlon one time had been a real low point.

Vanessa nods. “Somebody,” she stares at Tracy, “tried to book a clown online. But apparently didn’t read their website very closely.”

“Why did I always miss these things? Your food fight, and this too?”

“Probably because you were constantly skipping out on shifts,” Tracy snarks.

“What’s a stripper?” Moses asks and she’s debating how on earth she can answer that question in any kind of appropriate way when Noah answers him instead.

“Ask Auntie Chas next time you see her.”

“Oh Noah, Chas is going to absolutely kill you,” Charity breathes out, in between the laughter that escapes her. “And I might not be around to stop her.”

Noah just shrugs. “I can run quicker than she can.” 

Vanessa frowns, checking her watch and looking up towards the sky. “We probably should think about heading back home sometime soon.”

“No, Mummy, I wanna stay longer!” Johnny pouts.

“It’s already getting cold, and it looks like it might start raining soon,” Vanessa points out.

“Am I with you tonight, or mummy Charity’s?” he asks, and Charity was reminded again of just how resilient the young ones are. They’d accepted it fairly easily, packing up their favourite toys every couple of days and quickly adapting to the constant switching around between houses. Moses, bless him, now had his things scattered between three houses but he took it all in stride.

“You’re at mine, you’re going to hers tomorrow.”

“And what about Moses?” Resilient though they were, the pair of them did always complain when they were both in the village but not in the same house.

“He’ll be at mummy Charity’s, but you’ll both be there tomorrow,” Vanessa explains.

Charity makes eye contact with Vanessa, an idea having passed through her mind. “Moses could stay with you tonight, if it’s okay with you Vanessa?” She isn’t sure what the rationale had been in the first place but right now she can’t think a reason he couldn’t go there, except that Charity still hates not having them around. She still feels as if she need to make up for all the time she's already missed with them. Still, Johnny enjoying his birthday matters more than that so she’ll survive.

"I don't mind," Vanessa replies at the same time as Tracy, forcefully, says "no, not happening."

Vanessa looks at her questioningly. "They'll be high as kites tonight and keep Frankie awake and I need to sleep tonight. She had me up at all hours last night, I can’t do that again today."

"Yeah okay, fair enough.” Vanessa likes living with Tracy again but she’s right, Frankie’s still terrible at sleeping through the night and Vanessa absolutely doesn’t miss those days with Johnny. She occasionally ponders moving out but never bothers to do anything about it.

"How about mine, then? You could come over too Vanessa, obviously. It's Johnny's birthday, I wouldn't suggest you miss any of it," Charity offers, and Vanessa smiles, nodding her head. The boys too, clearly liked the plan, looking hopefully to Vanessa for her agreement.

"Yeah, sounds good."

Charity ends up with the _delightful_ job of driving home both the younger boys. It’s not so bad when she does the school run, which a quick journey she knows like the back of her hand, but she isn’t overly familiar with the route back to Emmerdale from this part of the coast and the boys won’t be quiet no matter how many times she asks them. Eventually, she passes them the tablet out of her bag and tells them to find something to watch. It works for long enough that she gets back to a more familiar area and she doesn’t need to concentrate so much. By the time they pull up at home, they’re both singing loudly and out of key and Charity contemplates just leaving them in the car: they probably wouldn’t mind much, they haven’t even noticed yet that they’d arrived home.

Still, she decides against the plan and let’s them out as Vanessa’s car pulls up behind hers.

“I dropped Noah and Sarah at Jacob’s Fold, they wanted to get some school work done apparently,” she explains as Charity looks questioningly at the empty car.

“And here I was thinking you’d abandoned them on the A64. I might have thought about doing the same with the monsters,” Charity confides, confident Vanessa will take it as the joke it is. “Come on in, then.”

The boys crash onto the sofa once they get indoors, the excitement of the day having finally got to them so Charity lets them choose a film on Disney+ while Vanessa makes two cups of tea.

Charity’s at the edge of the sofa, Moses curled lightly into her side and she runs her hand through his hair absentmindedly. She smiles at Vanessa gratefully as she passes her a mug of tea, milkier than she usually makes it for herself but it’s comforting all the same.

“We’re watching Toy Story 3,” Charity informs her, biting back a laugh at the pained expression on Vanessa’s face. It wasn’t even the first time that week that Johnny had chosen it.

The film is barely halfway through when Charity falls asleep. Vanessa gives her a good half hour, but it’s already after 7pm and doesn’t want Charity not to be able to sleep tonight so when the boys are in the kitchen getting more snacks, she perches on the edge of the sofa and gently shakes her shoulder.

“Hey sleepyhead, you should wake up,” she speaks softly as Charity groans and her eyes blink open. “Sorry for waking you, I just thought you’d rather be able to get to sleep tonight.”

“Yeah, you were right. Thanks,” she replies.

The front door opened and Charity looked over, a smile taking over her face as Noah walked in. “Hey, I thought you were staying at Jacob’s Fold tonight?”

He shakes his head. “I finished the work I wanted to get done, I wanted to come home.” Home. Charity doesn’t let it show, knowing Noah won’t appreciate any shows of affection in front of others, but Noah feeling at home with her again makes her more elated than she knows how to explain.

The little ones came back into the room, their little arms full of crisps and sweets.

“Is there anything at all healthy there?” Vanessa asks.

“That’s wishful thinking Ness, today is a lost cause. I’ll feed them some vegetables tomorrow.”

They go back to watching films and eventually Charity and Vanessa take the boys up to bed after Johnny falls asleep leaning against Noah.

“Night, mums,” Moses had whispered to them sleepily and then Charity had shut the door and leaned against it.

“They’re asleep, we did it,” Charity says and Vanessa laughs. “I like them best asleep, I think.”

Vanessa nods, looking almost as tired as Charity feels. “I should probably head home, I guess.”

“You don’t have to,” Charity replies without thinking. “I mean, stay for a bit if you want. There’s no rush.”

“Right now I barely even want to move from this spot, so that’s tempting.”

Charity reaches out, takes Vanessa’s hand and tugs her towards the stairs. “We might as well sit down and be comfy, yeah?”

Noah’s in the kitchen, and he points at two mugs on the counter. “I made you guys a cup of tea, I’m going to go watch TV in my room. Night.”

He disappears up the stairs without giving either of them a chance to respond.

“He’s such a good kid,” Vanessa comments and Charity smiles.

“Yeah, he is.”

They sat down on the sofa, Charity one end with her feet tucked underneath her and Vanessa at the opposite side.

“Today’s been brilliant Ness, thank you,” she says quietly. “I don’t just mean for today, I mean for everything. For letting me back in Johnny’s life, for giving us a chance to be friends. I’m so grateful.”

“Well, you’re welcome. I’m glad we’re friends and I’m glad you’re in Johnny’s life. Charity, you know that I’ve totally forgiven you, right? It feels like so long ago since everything happened, and you’ve already more than proven yourself and neither of us are the same anymore. You can relax, I’m going nowhere and neither’s Johnny. He’s your son and I don’t think he’d forgive me if I separated the two of you again,” Vanessa is so earnest, so confident in her assertion that it surprises Charity. “You have to forgive yourself too, we have to be able to move on.”

A stray tear rolls down her cheek. “Thanks Ness. That matters more to me than I know how to explain. God, when I think of where I was at at start of this year, I can’t believe this. I’d lost everyone I loved and I just kept making things worse, my family abandoned me and I could barely see a reason to keep living. It still seems totally unreal that you’re here, that my kids are all asleep upstairs and they speak to me and they’re happy to be here in this house I _own_.”

“Well, I’d assume Noah’s still awake,” Vanessa answers and Charity lets out a surprised laugh.

“Yeah, I’m sure he is, actually.”

“The rest of it though, it’s all you. You deserve to be happy Charity, you always have.” Vanessa reaches over, and takes Charity’s hand in hers. “Even when we were apart, it was still the only thing I wanted for you.”

Charity squeezes her hand gently. “I am happy. There’s not much else I could hope for in this life.”

Vanessa drinks the last of her tea, placing the mug back onto the coffee table without letting go of Charity’s hand.

“I really should get home before I fall asleep on your sofa.”

“You can always stay. You know that, right? It’s not just Johnny who’s welcome here, you are as well. And Ness, honestly, beautiful as you always are, you look dead on your feet. Just take my bed and I’ll have the sofa.”

“Charity, you’re just as tired as I am, if not more. I’m not going to take your bed,” Vanessa protests.

“Well then I insist on walking you home so I know you get back safe.”

“I live barely five minutes away and we live in a village with approximately ten people, I’ll be fine. Get yourself to bed.”

Charity glared at her. “Yeah, because nothing goes wrong in this village does it? Nobody’s ever been stabbed or kidnapped here,” Vanessa’s grip tightened in hers and her body stiffened, and Charity softened. “Sorry. Just stay here. For my sake, if not for yours, don’t make me go out in the cold just to walk you home. You know the boys will be happy if you’re here in the morning.”

“Yeah, and it gets you out of cooking breakfast. Don’t think I don’t still know your tactics, Dingle,” Vanessa laughs lightly. “I’ll stay. I’m not taking your bed though, don’t even start. The sofa will be fine.”

“Fine for _me_ , yeah.”

Vanessa looks at her cautiously. “We could always just share the bed Charity, we’re both adults. Let’s be honest, neither of us are still young enough to not have a bad back if we spent the night on the sofa.”

Charity nods, accepting that Vanessa has a point there. Her back always did twinge whenever she gave up the bed on the odd occasion Sarah stayed over. “Are you sure? I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, and I’d survive the sofa.”

“100% sure. And I think we’ve spent long enough arguing about this, so should we head up?”

“Yeah, definitely. I think I’ll be asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow,” Charity says, heading up the stairs. “My room is first on the right, I’ll just grab my pyjamas and change in the bathroom. They’re in the top drawer, help yourself to whatever you’d like.”

She gets ready for bed quickly, looking at herself in the mirror for a few moments longer than usual. Her hair was a mess, she noted, and she pulled a brush through it quickly then nodded at her own reflection, satisfied she looked at least halfway decent.

She goes back to the hallway, knocking on her own bedroom door. “You can come in!” Vanessa called and she opens the door. Vanessa is wearing a pair of Charity’s pyjamas that are adorably too long on her. She has another t-shirt in her hands and Charity eyes it questioningly.

Vanessa holds it up and Charity groaned. It was one of Vanessa’s, one she’d hidden when Vanessa had been packing to go to her mum’s in the first place. “I thought I lost this.”

Charity feigns ignorance. “I must have thought it was mine. Take it back if you want, I don’t wear it often.” _Not since I wore it to death and it stopped smelling like you_. Vanessa didn’t need to know that, though. “Oh, I have a spare toothbrush under the sink by the way, and help yourself to anything else you might need.”

“Thanks. I won’t be long,” Vanessa answers as she heads out of the room.

Charity pulls back the duvet, grateful she’d actually bothered to make her bed this morning, and slips in at her usual side, trying to ignore the anxiety that had surfaced at the idea of sharing a bed with Vanessa. She doesn’t have too much time to dwell on it as soon enough, Vanessa comes back into the room, closing the door behind her. “Shall I get the light?” she’d asked, flicking off the switch when Charity nodded, then she climbed into the bed as well.

“Good night, Charity.”

“Night Vanessa. Sleep well.”

Charity awakes slowly the next morning, feeling more well rested than she had in a a long time. The reason quickly became clear as she registers the feeling of an arm slung over her waist. Vanessa. She reminds herself that it was just for convenience and that she couldn’t cuddle in closer to Vanessa like she wants to. They’re just friends and she has to live with that.

She blinks a couple of times, letting her eyes adjust to the low light in the room. She squints at the clock and it’s just after eight: pretty good, although the boys would be up soon and she doesn’t think that them finding her and Vanessa in bed together is a good plan.

Vanessa is still sound asleep so Charity gently, and somewhat begrudgingly, lifts Vanessa’s arm that’s over her waist and gets up as quietly as she can manage. She grabs her dressing gown from the back of the door and she tiptoes downstairs, flicking the kettle on to make herself a cup of tea. She hears little feet on the stairs, plodding down slowly. _Johnny_ , she thinks. Moses wakes up with endless amounts of energy but Johnny is like her and takes time to come around.

“Morning mummy,” he’d said, pulling himself up onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Can I have juice please?”

“Morning Johnnybobs, did you sleep okay?” she asks, already pouring orange juice into his favourite blue cup. He nods and pulls at her hand.

“You gonna watch cartoons with me?”

“Yeah, you go switch the TV on and I’ll join you in a minute, okay?”

“‘Kay mummy.”

She stirs the teabag around her mug a couple of times, watching as the colour darkens and she adds a splash of milk. She carries it over to the sofa, leaning over the back of it to kiss the top of Johnny’s head.

“Sit here,” he pats the sofa.

They’d watched TV together quietly and not long later, she hears Vanessa’s footsteps on the stairs as well. If she let herself pretend, she could think that this is just like a Saturday morning at Jacob’s Fold before she and Vanessa ever broke up, when neither of them needed to work and the kids would argue over what they wanted for breakfast, only for Vanessa to ignore all of them and make whatever she fancied that morning anyway. 

“Well, don’t you two look cozy this morning,” she says, noting that Johnny looks like he might fall back asleep on Charity and she reminds herself that it’s just a memory. They’re not together, Vanessa only stayed because it got so late and they’re not a family like they used to be. 

“Yes, we are, so you’ll have to make your own cup of tea I’m afraid. Johnny won’t let me move but you can help yourself to anything in the kitchen,” Charity smirks a little, and Vanessa rolls her eyes.

“Stop using our son as an excuse to be lazy. Do you want another cuppa?”

“Yes please,” she grins and kisses the top of Johnny’s head, who curls even further into her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this fic completely out of order and this was one of the first things I wrote and then ended up having to completely rework everything else just so I could keep it (in my original timeline it took Charity and Vanessa much longer to start to get along than it does in this one) 
> 
> Also it’s barely relevant, but Tracy and Nate aren’t together anymore in this.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things keep progressing between Charity and Vanessa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a brief mention of homophobia in this chapter

_October_

“Charity, are you aware that you haven’t stopped talking about Vanessa ever since you walked through the door an _hour_ ago?” Diane asks and it stops Charity in her tracks.

“That’s not true! I told you about Johnny’s school play,” she defends weakly.

“Yeah and then you talked for ten minutes about the fact Vanessa wants you to go see it together. Just tell her!”

Charity looks away from Diane. “Tell her what? I already told her we can go together, it makes sense.”

“You _know_ that’s not what I meant. You’re going to have to tell her how you feel at some point.”

“No idea what you mean, Diane,” she replies, ever too slightly high pitched to sound genuinely casual. “We’re friends. I don’t feel anything for her beyond that.”

“Right, you’re friends, of course. Deny it as much as you like but we can all see the way you look at her and the way you talk about her? You couldn’t be more obviously in love if you tried.”

Charity sighs, knowing it’s not even worth it to try and lie. “Maybe I am, but what difference does that possibly make? I cheated on her, while she was ill with cancer. I know she says she’s forgiven me now, but it doesn’t mean she’d ever want to take me back. I can’t tell her and ruin what we have now.”

“I don’t think you’d be ruining anything. Vanessa looks at you the same way.”

“Oh Ness, come on, it’s one night out with your oldest friend in the world,” Rhona whines. “I’ll even buy your drinks if you come!”

“I’ve already told you I’m busy, we’ve promised the boys a cinema trip. Besides, it’s not even a night out. You’re going to the Woolpack and you’ll just end up getting distracted by Marlon anyway.”

“Charity can take the boys alone! You know that’s the normal thing, right? To _not_ spend time with your ex constantly, claiming it’s for the kids? One night out, that’s all.”

Vanessa glares. “Choose any other night and I’ll go with you, problem sorted.”

“Fine,” Rhona brightens. “Saturday, and we’ll go into Hotten. There’s that new gay bar we could go to, you might meet someone!” She looks at Vanessa intensely. “Unless there’s some reason, one that goes by the name of Charity, that you don’t want to do that?”

She rolls her eyes. “For the last time, there’s nothing going between me and Charity. We’re friends. We spend time together for the kids. That’s all,” she replies with a level of confidence she doesn’t quite feel and hopes Rhona doesn’t question her further.

Apparently she’s not that lucky. “But do you want there to be? Do you want to get back together with her?”

“Things are good now, it’s working. I don’t think either of us want to change that Rhona.”

“That’s not a no, Ness,” Rhona continues. “I can’t say I’m _that_ surprised, you two have always been... well, the two of you. I’ve never seen you happy like that before, and I’ve known you since you were 18. I’ve known Charity a long time too and she was a whole different person with you.” 

Vanessa shakes her head. “No, she wasn’t. I know it’s what everyone likes to believe, but I didn’t change Charity. I just gave her a chance and no one else ever bothered to get to know her beyond the surface.”

Rhona looks at her incredulously. “Even now you’re still defending her! You so obviously still love her.”

Tears sting at Vanessa’s eyes. “We broke up a year ago, Rhona. And the year we had before that was full of so much pain. We both hurt each other and it meant the boys got hurt as well. The cancer, the cheating, the whole mess with you and Johnny’s guardianship, the failed wedding? It was all too much. So even if I do still love her, it doesn’t matter. We’re friends and that has to be enough, okay?”

Rhona looks at her sadly. “I’m sorry Ness,” she answers, deflated from her earlier enthusiasm. “But what if things worked out this time? If you guys got back together and then you _and_ Charity, _and_ the kids were all annoyingly happy again? Look at me and Marlon! No one would ever have thought we’d get back together but we’re so happy now. Isn’t it worth giving you and Charity another shot if that’s what you want?”

“Stop it, Rhona,” Vanessa just sounds tired. “I’ve thought all of this already. Besides, I don’t even know if Charity would want to.”

“Marlon’s convinced she does. Apparently she never shuts up about you when they’re working together and I’ve seen the way she still looks at you. She clearly wants you back.”

Vanessa allows herself a moment to picture the future that Rhona is painting. Her and Charity, waking up together each morning. A wedding and honeymoon that actually goes ahead. Never needing to say goodbye to the kids when she drops them off at Charity’s. Having someone, having _Charity_ there when she goes to bed at night. And then she shakes her head, reminding herself of the way Johnny cried for Charity for a week straight after Tracy brought him to her mum’s. Her own absolute heartbreak when she found out Charity kissed someone else. Her guilt over not being able to speak to her own fiancée and creating doubts between them in the first place. It’s not something she’d survive again.

A couple of tears spill out, Vanessa unable to prevent them. “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late,” she says and finally Rhona seems to understand that it’s the end of the conversation.

On a trip out to the supermarket, Johnny sees the Halloween display and shrieks in excitement. He spends a good five minutes looking at all the costumes at eventually asks Charity if he can get Elsa’s dress from Frozen. He likes the colour and the way the fabric sparkles when it catches the light and she smiles at his enthusiasm. “Of course you can baba, let’s find it in your size.”

Johnny’s never really expressed much of an interest in Halloween before and she enjoys being able to see his personality develop like this. He’s so excited at the idea of trick or treating and it’s all he talks about for a week leading up to it. They ask Moses what he wants to dress up as and he’s clearly not quite understood the spirit of Halloween because he makes them all laugh when he says he wants to go as Paddy.

When Halloween finally arrives, Vanessa arrives at Dale Head with Johnny already in his costume who wastes no time in twirling around to show it off to Charity. “Moses, come look what I got for you,” Vanessa calls over and finally diverts his attention from the video game he’d been playing with Noah.

“What is it?” he runs over to her eagerly, his smile turning to a frown when Vanessa pulls out a pair of glasses. “Why’ve you got me glasses? I can see already.”

“I stole them from Paddy,” Vanessa answers and Moses gasps. “For your costume. I took the glass out of them so you don’t hurt your eyes. And here, there’s more. This is a stethoscope, we use it at the vets to listen to animals’ hearts. You gotta be careful with it because I need it back, but I thought you’d like it.”

He holds it carefully and examines it. “How does it work?”

Vanessa holds out her hand and Moses passes it back to her. “You see these two bits here? They go in your ears, like this,” she tells him and gently puts the earpieces in for him. “And then this bit, we put it on the animal and we can hear inside them, like this.” She holds the end of the stethoscope to her own chest and watches as his eyes grow wide.

“Wow,” he exclaims. “I can hear your heart!”

“Exactly! And then you can keep it like this around your neck,” she explains and Moses looks on in amazement.

“I’ll be so careful with it, thanks Ness!” he says and flings his arms around her neck.

“Can we go now, please?” Johnny asks, already waiting impatiently by the door.

“Yeah, I think we’re all ready kiddo,” Charity tells him and watches as he rushes out the door, followed closely by Moses.

They go from house to house and Charity and Vanessa mostly hang back, letting the boys run ahead while they walk slowly and chat together. Chas is in absolute hysterics when they stop by the pub and she realises that Moses is dressed up as Paddy.

They stop by most of their neighbours houses and for the most part, Moses and Johnny are both polite and well behaved, even with all of the excitement and the amount of chocolate they've managed to consume already. When they get to Diane’s, she gushes over their costumes and let’s Johnny and Moses raid her secret stash of good sweets, instead of the cheap ones bought specifically for Halloween and she surreptitiously passes Charity a big bar of Dairy Milk. “For you, since I’m sure those boys won’t be sharing later,” she says.

“Oh Diane, I might just be in love with you,” she replies seriously and ignores the eye roll she gets in response. They chat for a while longer before Johnny says there’s still more houses they haven’t been to yet and they say goodbye, moving on to the next house.

There’s a new family moved into the village that neither Charity nor Vanessa have met yet so they stay a bit closer to the kids than they had been doing. There’s a man, probably in his 60s who answers the door and seems friendly enough at first. He holds out a bowl of sweets so Johnny and Moses can help themselves but Charity sees the look on his face when he notices that Johnny is wearing a dress and his frown deepens as he looks up at Charity and Vanessa. The boys are already running off and Vanessa is smiling and saying thank you. Charity’s about to leave when he speaks.

“You’ve clearly confused that poor boy, making him wear a dress like that? It’s disgusting. He should have a father, not two dykes,” he spits out.

Charity resists the urge to punch him in the face. “Ness, go catch up with the kids. I’ll just be a minute,” she says softly, a hand on the small of her back to encourage her on.

She waits until Vanessa is out of earshot. She’ll tell her later on whatever is said, but right now she knows Vanessa will already be upset and doesn’t want to make it worse until they’re home.

“First of all, his father’s a murderer who abandoned him. And second, not that any of this is any of your business, but he chose the dress because he bloody likes the colour of it and he’s six years old. If I hear you say one more word about my son or about Vanessa, I’ll make you regret it. And I know you’re new to the village so if you’re in any doubt I can do that, just ask around for some village gossip because there is plenty.”

She doesn’t wait for a response. She knows she’s good at being threatening when she has to be and she’d rather get back to Vanessa and Moses and Johnny. She doesn’t think anything is actually likely to come from this. A feud with some village idiot is the last thing she actually wants to happen but she’ll protect her family if she has to.

She runs to catch up with them, one arm automatically going around Vanessa’s shoulder. “Home?” she asks and when she feels Vanessa nod slightly she directs the boys to Tug Ghyll.

“Ness, you _know_ that guy’s an idiot, yeah?” she speaks quietly so there’s no chance of Johnny and Moses overhearing. “He’s not worth being upset over.” 

“I know,” she sighs but Charity can still hear the hurt in her voice. “And I think I’d have been fine if it had just been directed at us, but it was _Johnny_.” They watch as the boys bang on the door at Tug Ghyll and Tracy lets them in.

“Yeah, I know,” Charity agrees they head into the small house. “Look at him, though. He’s had such a good time this evening. He’s safe and he knows we love him. That’s all that matters, right?”

Vanessa nods, but she’s clearly still affected by what had been said and Charity wants nothing more than to make her feel better.

They look over to where the kids at sat on the floor, upturned bags of sweets and chocolates surrounding them. Charity goes over to them and kneels down, speaking in a low voice. “Okay boys, choose a couple of chocolates you want now and go upstairs and play for a bit. But give mummy a really, really big hug on the way, yeah?” she tells them and smiles when she sees that it seems to cheer Vanessa up a little bit. “Trace, are you going to put the kettle on?”

“Depends, are you going to tell me why you’re both acting weird?”

She sighs. “You know that new guy who moved to the village? He made some comments about Johnny wearing a dress and saying he needs a father.”

Tracy’s face hardens and she nods in understanding, already moving over to the kettle and taking out three mugs. “What an asshole,” she says and Charity nods, opening the bar of Dairy Milk from Diane and passing it over to Vanessa.

“So what happened then? Should we be expecting the police to turn up soon or did you let him live?” Tracy questions.

She rolls her eyes and helps herself to a piece of chocolate while Tracy puts down the cups of tea on the coffee table. “Oh my god, yeah. What did you say to him?” Vanessa asks, sitting up a bit and eating a square of chocolate as well.

“He’s alive, unfortunately. I just threatened him a little bit, said that if he ever says anything else about Johnny or Vanessa then I’ll make him regret it,” she shrugs.

“I forgot how hard you think you are. ‘ _Make him regret it_ ’” Tracy snorts.

“I can be threatening if I need to be!” Charity protests and she’s glad when Vanessa cracks a small smile.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re the big bad of the village,” Vanessa replies, amusement clear in her voice. “Thanks for defending him. Us.”

“As if I’d let anyone get away with saying that stuff about Johnny. Or about you.”

“Well, if he says anything again then I might punch him,” Tracy says. “Vee, honestly you shouldn’t worry. The guy’s an idiot. You’re a great mother and Johnny loves you.”

“Doesn’t mean it didn’t still hurt to hear, though.” She shakes her head. “Guys, I’m fine. I can tell you’re still trying to cheer me up and you don’t need to. Go on, go get the boys. I’ll have another cuddle off them,” she smiles, genuinely this time, and Charity relaxes. 

A couple of days later, Noah comes home with bruised knuckles and Charity panics. “What happened, did you get into a fight?” She fusses over his hand and he bats her away.

“Nothing, I’m fine,” he says but he’s avoiding eye contact and it’s obvious there’s something he’s not telling her.

“It’s clearly not nothing Noah, you’ve punched someone!” She tries to contain her anger but she’s terrified of whatever he might have gotten involved in. Her mind has jumped to all the worst case scenarios involving him getting into trouble with the police or kicked out of school.

“Yeah well, they deserved it,” he answers defensively and Charity takes a deep breath. It’s still not good, but at least he’s talking to her. She just needs to know what happened so she can deal with it.

“Who deserved it? I just want to help, I don’t want you to get into any trouble,” she tells him.

“I saw Tracy the other day,” Noah starts and it’s the last thing Charity had expected to hear. She can’t hide the look of confusion that crosses her face. “She told me about that guy who said shit about Johnny on Halloween.”

“Noah,” Charity breathes out. Her anger and fear dissipate almost instantaneously. “So you punched him, for Johnny.”

He nods. “And for you and Ness. You’re both good mums, you shouldn’t have to listen to that.”

Tears well up in Charity’s eyes and she tries to blink them back. “I don’t think I need to tell you that you shouldn’t have punched him, even if he did deserve it,” she says and carefully considers her next words. She wants to say that she’s proud of him and to thank him for looking out for Johnny but Noah tells her off if she gets too sappy. “Did you give him a black eye?” she asks instead and Noah grins.

“Think so, yeah. I punched him how Cain taught me, to make it hurt,” he says.

“When did Cain - never mind, not important. Listen, if this guys says anything to you, then come back to me, okay? I don’t want it getting you into any trouble,” she tells him seriously. And then she decides she can be a bit emotional if she wants. “You’re a good brother, Noah.”

_November_

“Hey, what are you getting Johnny for Christmas? I figured it’s best we coordinate so we don’t get them loads of duplicates,” Charity asks out of the blue one day. “He’s already been telling me he wants some fancy Lego set and also nail polish because I won’t let him use mine anymore,” she laughs. “Not since he spilt it all over my carpet.”

“Oh god, I forgot to tell you. I was looking after Frankie the other day for Trace, left them in the living room for all of ten minutes to shower and by the time I got back, he’d nicked one of Tracy’s nail polishes and was painting Frankie’s nails. Actually, his technique isn’t even half bad, it was just a shame Frankie didn’t understand she was meant to keep her hands still so it went everywhere. At least Tracy found it hilarious though,” Vanessa tells her and Charity cackles.

“So I accidentally created a monster when I let him do my nails once, then?” Charity laughs.

“Yeah, basically,” Vanessa agrees. “Anyway, why don’t we go shopping together for their Christmas presents? I hadn’t even started thinking about it yet, but you have a point, we don’t want them to end up with doubles of everything. And I have absolutely no idea where to start with Noah, you can give me some tips there.”

“You think I know what to get Noah? He’s been impossible to buy for ever since he was ten. But yeah, we should go shopping. How’s Saturday for you?”

Their shopping trip almost gets cancelled when Tracy and Frankie both come down with a cold so she can’t watch Johnny for them, until Diane offers to watch him for the day instead.

“Thanks Diane,” Charity says and then she turns to Johnny. “You, be good for Diane. No messing about. I love you,” she kisses him on the forehead and waves goodbye before getting back into the car.

Town is busy when they get there and they decide to stop in a small coffee shop first. It’s the sort of thing Charity would usually hate, with bustling crowds and people stepping inside her personal space non-stop. There’s obnoxious Christmas lights on every street and it looks like the shops are competing to see who can create the ugliest displays in their window. She leaves Vanessa in the queue for drinks when she sees a table become available and dashes across the room to claim it for themselves. There’s a woman with a pram that’s clearly had the same idea but Charity just shrugs almost apologetically when the woman glares as if it’s going to make her give up the table.

Vanessa joins her soon after and Charity perks up when she sees that Vanessa’s bought them each a mince pie. “This might be one of the only positives of places starting so stupidly early for Christmas,” she tells her, holding it up. “How much do I owe you?”

“Oh, just buy the next drinks,” Vanessa says and Charity nods. “How much of a grinch are you going to be today then? I can already see you hating everything Christmassy.”

“I’m not _that_ bad,” Charity retorts, narrowing her eyes when Vanessa laughs loudly. “What should we start with today, do you think? Big kids or little ones?”

“Well, the little ones aren’t a problem, we know what they want. For Noah, I was thinking he might like some new workout things? His trainers were starting to look scruffy last time we went for a run,” Vanessa suggests.

“He’d like that,” Charity agrees, and then takes a long drink of her coffee. It’s strong and warms her right up. “He keeps hinting he wants a car now he’s passed his test, but I've told him there's no chance of that for now. Told him he needs to get himself a job first or else he has no chance of being able to run a car anyway. So I have no idea what to get him now, in other words.”

“You’ll find something,” Vanessa reassures her. “I might be able to get him some hours at the vets. It’d just be a bit of admin and cleaning. I’ll suggest it to him, see what he thinks.”

Charity looks at her closely. She knows Vanessa’s still been trying to make things up to Noah, even though Charity’s pretty sure he’s forgiven her by now and his moods are just usual teenage stuff, rather than him still being upset with her. “The vets is doing better now, then?” she questions.

Vanessa nods. “Yeah, we are. Now that I’m back full time and Jamie’s actually remembered he works there, we’ve built our clients back up again. We’re pretty busy, part time wages for Noah wouldn’t be a problem.” She brings her mug back up to her mouth and finishes off the coffee. Charity’s already drank hers and she takes the last bite of her mince pie.

“Shall we shop, then?” Vanessa stands up and offers the crook of her elbow to Charity who rolls her eyes and links her arm with Vanessa’s.

“Let’s go,” she says.

It’s not as bad as she was expecting. The crowds annoy her but she makes sarcastic comments about the strangers they pass by and she enjoys hearing Vanessa’s laugh in response to them. She likes the way that Vanessa squeezes closer to her and their bodies touch when the crowds around them are especially busy. At one point, Vanessa tries on a pair of terrible, novelty Christmas glasses with antlers on top and Charity nearly kills herself laughing until Vanessa shoves a Santa hat on Charity’s head and then Vanessa is laughing just as hard. The shop assistant gives him a dirty look and they end up paying for the items before making their way back out the door and into the next shop.

Soon enough, they’re both laden with bags and they’ve both made a good start in their Christmas shopping. “I’ll have to coordinate with Ross as well,” Charity muses at one point. “But I think Ross was talking about getting Moses his own little kiddy tablet thing, so it’s shouldn’t be much of a problem.”

“Did you guys figure out who’s having Moses over the holidays?”

Charity grins. “Ross is having him until Christmas Eve, and then I’m picking him up and keeping him until after New Year’s.”

She’s been smug about it for a week now. Ross had wanted Moses back sooner, but Charity had completely exaggerated how upset she’d be with Ryan away and he’d given in easily. She will miss Ryan, it hadn’t been a total lie, but she knows how excited he is to go away with his new girlfriend and she’ll see him another day instead.

“That’s nice,” Vanessa smiles. “Johnny’ll be made up that they get to spend all that time together. Have you had any thoughts about us, the kids, over Christmas? How do you want that to work?” she asks and Charity can tell she’s nervous. It must have been playing on Vanessa’s mind.

Charity shrugs a little, trying to play it casual. “We could just spend Christmas Day all together, unless you don’t want to?”

“No, I’d like that a lot,” Vanessa answers and Charity can’t hold back her smile.

_December_

She knows it’s too early when she hears little footsteps sneaking across the landing. She forces herself to open one eye and check the time and she groans when she sees it’s 5:37am. That’s even worse than she’d hoped.

Dragging herself out of bed, she opens the bedroom door and is relieved the boys are still at the top of the stairs. “Johnny! Moses! Come here now,” she whispers and she’s relieved they do as she asks.

“It’s much, much too early to go downstairs unless you want Noah to be grumpy all day. Either go back to your room, or you can come in with me,” she says and bites back a groan as they stay with her.

“Why’re you in Noah’s room?” Johnny questions.

“Because mummy Ness is in mine, remember?” Noah, bless his soul, had offered to sleep on the sofa bed so the two women could both have a bed.

Charity had only been a little disappointed that they didn’t need to share again.

“Oh, yeah,” he agrees. “Can we go see mummy too?”

“It’s the middle of the night you monsters, so no,” Charity’s always been a light sleeper so she wakes up when the kids do more often than she’d really like. No need for them to wake up the entire household before 6am, though. “But we can watch TV and cuddle for a bit, okay?”

She settles them either side of her in the bed and props up an iPad, opening Netflix and putting on one of the kids shows and prays it’ll quieten them down.

It does, and not long later she’s fallen back to sleep.

The next thing she knows, she can hear people talking and feels movement around her and she blinks a few times, waking up slowly.

“Oh, you awoke the monster now boys, well done.” It’s Vanessa. Of course it is. The boys are still on either side of her and Vanessa’s in the doorway.

“M’not a monster,” she protests. “Time is it?”

“Just after 8, I was surprised they’d let me sleep in so late on Christmas until I realised they were in here with you.”

“They had me up at half bloody five.”

“Is it time for presents now?” Moses interrupts.

“Yeah, go on then,” Vanessa says and the boys jump out of bed and race down the stairs, Charity and Vanessa following just behind.

Vanessa makes three cups of tea and Noah has taken charge of handing out the presents which helps to minimise the carnage ever so slightly but there’s still wrapping paper in every corner of the living room. The boys smile widely at every present they open and Vanessa doesn’t stop snapping pictures the entire time.

Charity tries not to think of last Christmas. She’d been so alone then, in the midst of a downward spiral and somehow managing to self-destruct even further. Looking around now, she almost can’t believe how different things are. Her children are there, and so is Vanessa, and they’re all together and happy.

She lets herself enjoy the moment until a neatly wrapped present hits her square in the face. She sees her name and “ _Love from Vanessa x_ ” written on the tag and rips it open. It’s a knitted red scarf, the wool thick and gorgeously soft in her hands and she looks up at Vanessa in shock. “Did you make this?”

Vanessa nods and Charity wastes no time in wrapping the scarf around her neck, even if she is still wearing her pyjamas. She thinks she can smell Vanessa’s perfume on it but that could be wishful thinking. “I love it. Thank you. This definitely beats the present I bought you.” Charity had bought her a pair of fancy wellies, knowing that Vanessa’s pair had started to leak recently and it was making her miserable and cold whenever she had to go out on farm visits for work.

At the look on Vanessa’s face, a mixture of excitement and curiosity, she gestures to Noah to pass her a gift that’s ended up wedged under the tree - Vanessa’s present from her. She hands it over to Vanessa with an exaggerated flourish. “Happy Christmas, Ness.”

Vanessa’s face absolutely lights up when she opens the box. “This is perfect!” she exclaims. “It’s exactly what I needed. Thank you.”

The little ones whine dramatically when Noah hands them both a gift and announces that it’s the last one but they tear at the wrapping just as excitedly as they have done all morning and pull out matching Christmas jumpers. From Vanessa, of course. It’s the sort of cutesy thing that Charity wouldn’t usually like but even she has to admit that they look completely adorable in the ugly, multicoloured jumpers.

There’s a round of “thank you’s” now that the presents are open and the boys start playing happily, Noah already tapping away at his phone again. Charity can see that Vanessa is itching to start tidying away the mess so she makes eye contact with her and asks “how about I make breakfast and you make a start on clearing up in here?” and Vanessa nods in agreement.

Since it’s Christmas, Charity decides she’ll treat them and make their favourites. Chocolate chip pancakes for the boys, and bacon sandwiches for Noah and Vanessa. She works quickly in the kitchen and adds tomato ketchup for Noah and brown sauce for Vanessa before she takes them back into the living room and hands them over. “A few more minutes for yours boys, okay?” she says and isn’t surprised when they don’t even acknowledge her.

Going back to the pancakes, she makes an attempt at making them into fun shapes. She tries to make one a Christmas tree but it ends up looking like a misshapen triangle and the snowman isn’t much better so she gives up and makes regular pancakes anyway and then carries them through and tries not to focus on the way the boys practically drown theirs in maple syrup.

Once they’ve all finished, Noah collects up the plates and says he’ll do the washing up. “Merry Christmas, Mum,” he says and he kisses her on the cheek. Johnny and Moses, as always, follow him and Charity bites back a laugh when she hears him tell them that they can dry up.

“That’s at least one broken plate, then,” Vanessa laughs.

“Yep,” Charity agrees. She’s still processing the fact that Noah willingly kissed her on the cheek. And is washing up. 

They’re proven right when a couple of minutes later they hear a smash from the kitchen and Noah yelling “Moses!”

When Charity eventually goes to bed that evening, she thinks the day was a success. Moses breaking a plate and poor Johnny cutting his foot on it had been a minor disaster, but they’d all still been happy and Johnny had been fine. It was a million miles away from last Christmas, or all of the past Christmases where she’d been surrounded by Dingles but still felt so alone and unhappy. She’s genuinely happy now and she’s going to keep it that way.

Charity doesn’t work on New Year’s Eve, and doesn’t particularly fancy going out knowing that the entire world is going to be drinking like there’s no tomorrow. Tracy however, is desperate for a night out with Vanessa so Charity takes the kids and waves the two sisters off with a smile. Vanessa looks absolutely unbelievable, in a tight blue dress and her hair and makeup done up to the nines.

Leanna’s throwing a party that Noah and Sarah are both at, under strict instructions to call Charity if there’s the slightest of problems. She knows too well about the things that teenagers get up to, and has to try hard not to worry about them. They’re pretty sensible, the whole issue with the drugs and Danny well and truly over and Charity wants them to have fun. They both deserve it.

However, all of this means that Charity ends up alone on New Year’s Eve, once she’s put the little ones to bed. She let’s them stay up later than usual but they’re still six years old so that means they’re upstairs sleeping by 8:30. She watches them sleep for a while and then potters around the house tidying up. She calls Ryan to wish him a happy birthday and they chat for a while, but he’s gone away with his girlfriend for the weekend so, too soon, he’s saying goodbye after confirming their plans to get dinner next week.

She doesn’t want to watch the New Year’s celebrations on TV so she pops on an old film instead and tries to ignore the loneliness she feels. She hadn’t realised how used she’d gotten to being around people, with it being a rarity for her to have the house to herself nowadays.

It’s just gone 11 when there’s a knock at the door. She thinks maybe it’s one of the Dingles or Diane, checking in on her since they know she’s alone with the kids. For a second, Charity just likes the thought that there’s multiple people around her now who care about her and who do things like check up on her. Even if it’s annoying sometimes.

It’s Vanessa.

She’s surprised. Vanessa’s always enjoyed a good night out so the fact she’s apparently back in the village already on New Year’s Eve of all days is surprising.

“Charity,” she smiles wide, in the way she always does when she’s tipsy.

“Didn’t think you’d be back this early, come in Ness,” Charity says and Vanessa follows her inside, pulling off her heels before she’s even through the door.

“Tracy made me dance for ages, it was awful. And then she pulled and abandoned me,” Vanessa complains, throwing her body onto the sofa. She sits up slightly, making just enough space so Charity can sit down next to her.

As soon as she does, Vanessa shifts herself sideways slight so she’s facing Charity and their legs are pressed together. “My heart bleeds for you, babe,” Charity jokes.

“I wanted to be here with you anyway,” Vanessa admits. “I know how tough New Year’s is for you.” She takes Charity’s hand, rubbing her thumb over Charity’s comfortingly.

Charity, as always, is amazed by Vanessa’s kindness. “Yeah, it’s not my favourite holiday,” she agrees. “And I’ve not exactly loved being alone since the little ones went to bed.”

She’s not sure why she’s telling Vanessa this.

“You don’t have to be alone, Charity,” Vanessa tells her and Charity’s heart beats uncomfortably. “I’d have stayed if you wanted me to.” She says it as though that’s normal, as though Charity asking her ex-fiancée to spend New Year’s Eve with her just so she wasn’t alone would have been a reasonable thing to do.

“It’s not that serious, Ness. You know me, I’m just being dramatic as per usual,” she tries to deflect. 

For a moment, Vanessa goes silent and the two of them focus their attention back to the TV.

“I mean it. You never have to be alone. I always want to be with you,” Vanessa tells Charity seriously and then she kisses her. Charity responds on instinct, her hand going around Vanessa’s back to pull her closer and the kiss deepens. It’s so good and Charity wonders if she’s dreaming as Vanessa’s hand runs through her hair and all she can feel is Vanessa. And then she tastes the wine on Vanessa’s tongue and pulls away as if she’s been stung.

Vanessa’s been _drinking_ tonight. Charity knew that and she feels a sudden rush of guilt hit her as she realises she’s taking advantage of Vanessa right now. She’s been on the other end of this, and she knows how awful she’s felt the morning after. She can’t do that to Vanessa, who right now is leaning forwards towards Charity again.

Charity brings her hand up to Vanessa’s shoulder, gently pushing her away. “Ness, no. You’ve been drinking, you’re not thinking clearly.”

She shakes her head. “I’ve not drank that much, I know what I’m doing. I want this.”

“I can’t, Ness.” It takes every ounce of strength she has to say no and watch as Vanessa’s face falls dramatically before she runs out the house without another word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all the lovely comments so far, it’s definitely helping me to stay motivated with this! :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charity is involved in an accident

_January_

Vanessa and Charity haven’t spoken properly since New Year’s. They’re polite with each other when they drop the kids off and if anyone notices the shift in their behaviour, no one comments on it.

The first time they see each other after the kiss, Charity has her apology all planned out and she thinks she’s ready to deal with it. When Vanessa can’t even look at her, she just says goodbye to the kids and leaves quickly. She gets to the Woolpack half an hour early for her shift and Marlon gives her an odd look but doesn’t question it.

It’s a dreary afternoon in mid January when Vanessa’s phone rings. She doesn’t recognise the number but it’s a local so she answers, assuming it’s probably work. “Vanessa Woodfield.”

“Good afternoon, I’m calling from Leeds General Infirmary on behalf of one of our patients, Charity Dingle? She was brought in earlier following a car accident.”

Vanessa’s whole world seems to disappear around her and she’s glad she was already sitting when she took the call. “Do you know anything about her condition? How serious is it?” She knows she’s panicking and she has to rely on some of the breathing techniques she learnt in therapy to calm herself down.

“I’m afraid her condition is quite serious, she’s been sent to the Intensive Care Unit and doctors are still assessing the extent of her injuries so I don’t have any detailed information. Are you able to come down to the hospital?” he says and Vanessa inhales sharply.

“Yes, yes I’m setting off now,” she answers and hangs up the phone without another word.

Vanessa has no idea of how she even gets to the hospital or finds Charity’s room. She acts on autopilot until she sees Charity in front of her and she looks so much worse than Vanessa had imagined. She looks so small in the bed, covered in cuts and bruises across all the skin Vanessa can see. Her left arm is in a cast and there’s dried blood staining her blonde hair.

She practically collapses into the chair at the side of Charity’s bed.

“Oh god, Charity.” She holds her right hand, mindful of the IV that’s in it, and she can’t stop the tears that stream down her face. Charity’s always been so full of life, even when going through hardships that would make most people crumble. Now she looks broken and Vanessa can hardly stand to look at her, but she can’t look away either.

She knows she needs to ring the Dingles and let them know what’s happened, but she wants to wait until she has more actual information to give them and luckily it’s not long before a doctor does arrive and Vanessa listens to her intently. “Charity’s injuries are serious and although she’s stable right now, it’s still possible she could take a turn for the worse. We took her into surgery for internal bleeding when she arrived and it went well but we’re monitoring her closely. We’re hopeful that she should be able to make a full recovery however it’s impossible to make any guarantees at the moment. We’ll have a better idea once she wakes up, which could take anywhere from a few hours to a day or more.”

She nods, trying to focus on the fact the doctor sounds relatively positive. She focuses on the fact a recovery is possible rather than dwelling on the idea of Charity taking a turn for the worse. She wouldn’t be capable of anything otherwise. “Thank you.”

She rings Chas, who’s raging when she answers the phone. “Where the _hell_ is Charity, she was meant to be at work hours ago! We’re short staffed so please tell her to get herself here now before I fire her.”

“She’s in the hospital, Chas. There was a car accident, she’s in the hospital,” Vanessa says, trying to keep her voice steady. “They said she’s stable for now but it’s still serious. I don’t much else yet.”

She hears Chas gasp. “Oh god. What needs doing? I take it you’re there already?”

“Yeah, I am, I’m with her. Someone needs to tell Noah and Sarah but I don’t want to do that over the phone and I don’t want to leave Charity on her own. I’ll get Tracy to look after Moses and Johnny so they’re fine,” Vanessa replies. “There’s Ryan and Debbie as well, someone needs to tell them.”

“Right, of course. I’ll start ringing round and one of us will go to the school to tell Noah and Sarah. It’s going to be fine, Ness, it’ll take more than a car accident to stop Charity Dingle,” she says and Vanessa tries to believe her.

“Yeah, she’ll be fine,” Vanessa echoes, not sure if she believes it or not. “Thanks Chas. I’ll text you the ward and her room number.”

“I’ll be there soon, hopefully. I’ll get things sorted out here and then we’ll be there.”

They say goodbye and once Vanessa’s made a quick phone call to Tracy, she goes back to just staring at Charity. She gently runs a hand through Charity’s hair a couple of times and strokes her fingers down her cheek, careful to avoid the bruises that are varying shades of yellow and purple already.

“Wake up,” she pleads. “Just wake up, Charity. Please. Your family’s all rallying around you, they’re all going to be here and you need to wake up so you can tell them off for fussing over you, just like I know you’ll want to. You can tell me off for fussing, too. Just so long as you wake up. Noah and Sarah will be here soon and they need you.” She knows she’s rambling but she’s pretty certain Charity can’t hear her, so it’s fine. She talks to Charity for ages, until her phone rings again and it’s only when she sees that it’s Chas that she bothers to answer.

“Cain’s going to get Sarah and Noah from school and I’ve rang Debbie and Ryan. Debs is planning to drive down from Scotland and Ryan was with one of his friends in Leeds so he should be there soon. We’ll all be there as soon as we can.”

“Thanks Chas. There’s no update here, but I’ll let you know if there’s any changes,” she hangs up her phone, turning her attention back to Charity.

It’s odd, to be sitting here holding Charity’s hand without any response from her. She’s used to Charity intertwining their fingers or squeezing Vanessa’s hand. Charity is usually always in motion. Even asleep, she’d move around the bed and it probably would have disturbed Vanessa’s own sleep if it weren’t for the fact Charity’s presence alone had always been a comfort to her. 

It’s not long before the door’s opening and Noah comes in, closely followed by Cain and Sarah. Vanessa jumps up, her arms wrapping Noah in a hug automatically. He’s looking at Charity and pain is written across his face.

“Sit down, love. She’s okay, she’s just still asleep,” she tries to sound reassuring but the truth is that Vanessa is absolutely terrified as well.

“She doesn’t look okay,” he says. “A car crash is not _okay_. She might _die_ , and then I’ll really be alone and it’s not fair. What even happened anyway, Cain said a car accident? Who did this?” he asks with clear anger and fear in his voice and Vanessa feels so useless. She’s pretty good at dealing with Noah when he’s in a good mood but right now she knows there’s nothing she can do to help. 

“The doctors sound positive about her chances, we can’t think the worse yet. And Noah, if anything did happen, you wouldn’t be alone. You have all your family, you have me, we’d all still be there for you. I don’t have any details about the crash though, but I’m sure we can find something out,” she offers, and looks at Cain hopefully. He’s staring at Charity with a look Vanessa can’t quite decipher. She’s reminded yet again that she’ll never quite understand the bond that Charity and Cain have, even if she knows almost all the details of their relationship from Charity.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” he offers. He turns to Sarah who’s still lingering by the door, clearly hesitant to come further into the room and to see Charity. “Are you stopping here?”

“Yeah, I’ll stay,” she decides eventually but the uncertainty in her voice is clear. “Granny Charity stayed with me for ages when I was in here. I’ll stay here now.”

Vanessa’s throat closes up and she tells herself she has to hold herself together now. She can’t break down like she wants to around the kids.

Ryan arrives then as well, and Charity’s room starts to fill up with various Dingles. None of them really speak. There’s nothing they can say.

Cain returns with a face like thunder. “It was some idiot driver who ran a red light. He drove right into the driver’s side of Charity’s car and left her like this this, but he’s fine,” Cain yells. “I’ll bloody kill him. And then if she doesn’t wake up, I’ll resurrect him and make him really suffer before I kill him again.”

A nurse appears at that moment. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to try and remain calm. I understand it’s a difficult situation, but this is a hospital and people are trying to recover.”

“Fine, whatever, I’ll just threaten murder a bit quieter and you can go, unless there’s something you can do to make _her_ better.”

Noah lets out a surprised laugh and Vanessa shoots the nurse an apologetic glance as she leaves the room.

“Tell you what Cain, I’ll give you an alibi if it comes down to that,” Vanessa replies. “But she _is_ going to wake up.” Vanessa can’t consider any other option.

It gets towards the end of visiting hours and Charity still hasn’t woken up. A nurse arrives to tell them only one of them can stay.

There’s no real discussion about it, but Noah turns to Vanessa and says “you’ll stay, right? Mum would want it to be you,” and Vanessa can only nod, standing up as the others leave. There’s promises to update them immediately if anything happens overnight. To Noah, she says “you’re welcome to stay at mine, if you’d like. Tracy is there with Moses and Johnny, but it’s up to you,” and then she doesn’t worry too much. Everyone here is his family so wherever he is tonight, she knows he’ll be somewhere safe.

She reclaims the seat next to Charity’s bed and talks to Charity until she can’t keep her eyes open any longer. “Okay, today’s been enough dramatics. I know you don’t like to be rushed but tomorrow you can wake up, yeah? You have everyone’s attention, you might as well be awake to see it. Debbie’s even on her way down from Scotland and Noah wouldn’t admit it but he was terrified today, so wake up for him. And wake up for me, as well. Because I need you to be okay as well, I don’t want to raise our children without you. I still love you, even if you don’t feel the same.”

She wakes in the morning, a crick in her neck and it takes her a moment to remember where she is. She looks at her watch and it’s just barely 7am so she isn’t expecting to see Debbie when she stretches and turned around.

“Morning,” Debbie says when she hears movement. “I’ve been here an hour already. Couldn’t sleep last night so I’ve left Jack with dad.” She frowns. “Well, I left them both asleep and I left a note on the kitchen table.”

Vanessa nods. “Has there been any update on your mum yet?”

“Not yet, no. A doctor came around and fiddled with some stuff, took a few notes but he didn’t bother to tell me anything.”

“Hopefully they’ll tell us something soon then,” Vanessa replies and Debbie nods in agreement.

Vanessa forces herself to stand up and walk around the room just to stretch her muscles a little. She’s been cooped up in here for the best part of a day and it was getting to her but she knows she wouldn’t possibly relax without Charity in her line of sight.

Thankfully, they don’t have to wait too long before a doctor arrives to update them. “It’s good news, I’m glad to say. She’s continued to improve overnight which is a very positive sign and hopefully she’ll wake up today. I’d say you have a lot of reasons to be hopeful.”

Debbie nodded and thanked the doctor while Vanessa let out a quiet “Thank God,” and looks back over at Charity, holding her hand again and giving it a gentle squeeze.

“I’ll just go ring the others, update them on what the doctor said,” Debbie says, stepping out the room.

“Did you hear that, Charity? You’re going to be fine. You just need to keep fighting and wake up.”

“I’ve been thinking of coming home,” Debbie reveals a while later. Charity still hasn’t woken up. “I miss Sarah and I’ve trained someone up to run the garage for me. And I wouldn’t feel right leaving mum like this.”

Vanessa resists the urge to point out that it wouldn’t be the first time that she _and_ the rest of the Dingles had abandoned Charity when she’d been in a state and needed them before now.

“Your mum would love it if you did,” she says instead. “She misses you, she doesn’t shut up about it when she’s got plans to go see you.”

Debbie looks at Vanessa intensely. “Funny, because when she does visit, she doesn’t shut up about _you_. What exactly is going on between the two of you, because she insists you’re just friends but you’ve not left this room once and I _know_ my mum’s in love with you.”

Vanessa looks away from Debbie, then. She isn’t sure if Charity would have told her about the kiss or not and she isn’t a good enough liar to get away with lying outright to Debbie. She thinks about her saying that she _knows_ Charity loves her. Vanessa wonders if that’s something she’d said or if Debbie was just guessing and then she remembers about the way Charity pushed her away after she kissed her and figures it’s just a guess.

“We are just friends,” Vanessa shrugs. “I still care about her a lot, but we’re not back together.” It’s a heavily edited version of the truth, but still the truth. She hopes Debbie will let it drop.

“But do you want to get back together with her?”

_Yes_ , she thinks. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know if Charity wants to either.”

Debbie rolls her eyes in precisely the same way that Charity does. “You’re both idiots.”

Vanessa is half asleep, her hand still holding Charity’s when she thinks she feels a faint squeeze. She sits up quickly, startled. “Charity, Charity can you hear me? Did you just squeeze my hand?”

A second passes and then it happens again, ever so slightly stronger.

“Oh my God.” Green eyes blink open slowly.

“Charity,” she whispers. “Look at me.”

Charity’s eyes meet hers and Vanessa almost cries.

“You’re in hospital, you’re okay. Me and Debs are here, oh my god, I’ll be right back I’m just going to get a doctor.”

She stands, rushing to the door and flinging it open. “Charity’s awake,” she shouts and the noise startles Debbie awake.

“Oh my God, mum, you’re awake. Welcome back.”

From then on, Charity slowly but surely recovers from the crash. They keep her in hospital for ten days in total and Charity spends all of them constantly asking if she can go home. She knows she’s annoying the doctors and a majority of her family but she’s also on some fairly strong painkillers which have the added side effect of giving her even less of a filter than usual.

“You know, this is abuse,” she tells a doctor one day. “You’re keeping me here against my will, I’ll sue you.”

Vanessa rolls her eyes. “She can’t afford a lawyer, don’t worry.” 

The doctor just laughs. “It’s fine, it’s not even the worst thing I’ve heard today. Anyway, Charity, I’ve just finished my checks and you’re doing well. You might be out of here by the end of the week, but I make no promises just yet.”

“But it’s only Tuesday!” Charity is distraught.

Another day, Chas visits with Eve and Paddy and Charity outright blanks Paddy for a good ten minutes. She talks to Chas and pulls faces at Eve but she doesn’t look at Paddy until he asks what he’s done.

“Well, you’re here,” Charity explains. “Vanessa’s at work but if _you_ were at work instead then Vanessa could be here and she’s much better company than you.”

“Maybe Vanessa just needed a break from your rudeness,” Paddy grumbled while Chas laughed loudly.

“And you’re still pretending you’re _not_ in love with her?”

“I’m not. She’s just better than Paddy. We’re friends.”

“Yeah, just friends. Just friends that happen to share a son, who kiss on New Year’s Eve -”

“I regret telling you that,” Charity interjects, scowling.

“- and who share a bed instead of walking five minutes back home?” Chas finishes as if Charity hadn’t said anything.

“Exactly,” Charity agrees. “Friends.”

“Wait a minute, what happened on New Year’s Eve?” Paddy asks, his mind only just processing Chas’s earlier words and he ducks when Charity tosses a pillow at his head.

She hates being in the hospital, but Charity likes it best when all of her children and grandchildren are there. She makes the doctors and nurses try to guess which ones are her grandchildren and enjoys how uncomfortable they get when Charity gleefully announces that they’re wrong.

The first time Vanessa had brought Moses and Johnny to visit her, Johnny, the sensitive little soul he is, had cried and only calmed down once Charity insisted that someone lifted him onto the bed with her and she’d promised him that she was okay and the doctors were looking after her. He’d gently pressed kisses against some of the cuts and bruises he could see and whispered that it was to make her better.

“You gotta come home soon mummy,” he tells her. “I missed you. I can help look after you.”

She kisses the top of his head. “You tell that to those doctors, eh babe? Tell them Doctor Johnny says I can go home.”

When they do eventually let her home again, Charity struggles. She’s in a lot of pain and the painkillers they’d sent her home with barely touch the sides. She can’t stand being so reliant on other people and she snaps at her family constantly. Vanessa takes the brunt of her frustration more often than she should. Each time, Charity apologies sincerely and Vanessa’s always there with a forgiving smile.

For the first time in a long time, she has to resist the urge to reach for a bottle. She’s always had a problem self-medicating with alcohol, preferring to replace any kind of pain with the temporary distraction of drink but she can’t do that now.

There’s constantly people visiting and it helps. Debbie is there nearly every day and Vanessa only leaves to go to work and home, occasionally. Charity is pretty sure she spends more nights on the sofa at Dale Head than she does in Tug Ghyll in the first few weeks when Charity is home.

After a couple of weeks, Charity starts to do better. The community nurses who have been checking on her say they’re pleased with her progress and Charity is starting to feel a bit more like herself again.

She wakes up early one morning, and heads downstairs to make herself a drink. She can actually manage that herself now, which is an improvement and she tries not to focus on how frustrating it is that _making a drink_ is somehow cause for celebration now.

Despite Charity’s attempts not to make too much noise, she hears Vanessa stir. “Charity?” she calls over.

“Yeah babe, just me. I’m sorry for waking you,” Charity answers sincerely and she’s suddenly overcome with guilt. Vanessa’s done so much to help her, she’s taken time off work and spent days sleeping in a plastic chair in Charity’s hospital room and now Charity’s waking her up in the morning as well. She makes a second cup of tea quickly and takes it to Vanessa.

“Listen, you should go home soon. I’m okay now. You should get some actual rest, sleep in a real bed for a change,” Charity tells her. “I don’t really need much help anymore, you know that. You don’t need to do all of this for me anymore.”

“Are you sure?” Vanessa asks, not quite managing to prevent a yawn from escaping. “I don’t mind staying, I don’t want to leave you struggling.”

“Yeah, I can manage for myself now I think. I appreciate everything you’ve done, but you should go home,” Charity says and Vanessa recognises the dismissal. 

“Okay,” she agrees. She knows Charity is right, she is doing better now and of course she doesn’t still want her ex sleeping on the sofa. Especially when they hadn’t even been speaking before the crash, and Vanessa had barely even given Charity a choice in the matter. She’d just taken it upon herself to help and she’s clearly overstepped the mark. “We can go back to the old routine with the boys, then?”

Charity nods. “Yeah, that sounds good.” She’s going to miss Vanessa, but she’s trying not to be selfish. She’s already done too much and Charity resolves to make things up to Vanessa soon somehow, now that she’s more or less back on her feet. She’ll buy her a really nice present. Maybe a holiday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I hope you enjoyed this and I’d love to hear any thoughts on it! 
> 
> (coming up: they actually talk to each other in the next chapter)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charity and Vanessa finally talk

_February_

Once Vanessa is back home properly, Charity decides to leave it for a few days before she goes over with a bouquet of yellow roses and the largest box of Maltesers she can find in the supermarket. It’s not even close to being enough, but it’s a start.

“I just wanted to say thanks,” she says when Vanessa lets her in. “You did so much for me over the past month and you didn’t have to. I really appreciated it, Ness.”

“I’m just glad I could help,” Vanessa responds easily. “Do you want a cuppa?”

“You sit down, I’ll make the drinks. You’ve done more than enough already, let me start making it up to you,” Charity offers and she grabs mugs from the cupboard as she flicks the kettle on.

“I want to apologise,” Vanessa says once Charity has her back turned to her to make the drinks. “For New Year’s. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that, I’m sorry,” she continues and Charity drops the spoon she’s using onto the floor.

She’s almost certain she must have misheard Vanessa. She’s not sure how _Vanessa_ is the one apologising for this, especially when both of them have completely avoided bringing up the kiss until now.

She turns around, slowly. Vanessa’s on the sofa, anxiously picking at her old nail polish.

She gives up on the idea of making drinks. “Vanessa, it’s not you who needs to apologise. You were drunk and I - I shouldn’t have kissed you back. I was taking advantage,” she replies, the familiar feelings of guilt rushing back to her and she has to look away.

“ _I_ kissed _you_ ,” Vanessa answers quickly. “Charity, I kissed you. It was _me_ , you weren’t taking advantage of me. I wanted it. But I saw how upset you were afterwards and I realised that I had no right to kiss you like I did, without your permission and on a day that I knew was emotional and difficult for you. You did nothing wrong, I’m sorry if I made you think otherwise.”

Charity’s head is spinning. If Vanessa had wanted that kiss, then - well, maybe they are as stupid as Chas keeps insisting they are.

“Vanessa,” she says slowly. “What do you mean, exactly?”

“You pushed me away, you said no. I saw the look on your face, and I’m so sorry.”

“Because you were drunk. I didn’t want you to regret anything in the morning. You weren’t thinking clearly.”

They both stare at each other for a moment, processing everything that’s been said. Charity’s not stupid, far from it, but she can’t quite make herself believe this conversation is really happening.

“I wouldn’t have regretted it. Charity, I’d wanted to kiss you for weeks before that. Maybe months,” Vanessa admits.

Charity almost, _almost_ crosses the room and kisses Vanessa in that moment. She’s never been good at holding herself back when she wants something and she wants Vanessa and she’s pretty sure Vanessa wants her too. But she can’t, not without being absolutely certain.

“Do you still want that?” she asks and she can barely believe it when Vanessa, looking as surprised as Charity feels, nods her head.

“Yes,” she answers and Charity does cross the room then, grasping at Vanessa’s hand so she stands up and they face each other, Charity searching Vanessa’s eyes for that final certainty that they both want this.

When she sees nothing but desire, she tilts her head down and kisses Vanessa, gently at first but then more passionately and when they eventually pull apart they’re both breathing heavily.

“I know there’s probably more we need to talk about,” Vanessa says. “But do you want to go upstairs?”

Charity nods.

Later on, Vanessa is on her side next to Charity. Their legs are still entangled together and her head rests on Charity’s chest and she thinks that the steady beat of Charity’s heart could lull her to sleep if she let it.

“It was you that I thought of,” Charity says and Vanessa startles: she’d been pretty sure Charity was sleeping.

“What’s that?”

“When I saw that car coming towards me. I thought of the kids, and I thought of you. I was so sure I was about to die and all I could think about was how much I hated the idea of dying without being with you again.”

“I’d wanted you back anyway, way before that,” she carries on when Vanessa stays quiet. “Pretty much since the second we broke up.”

“I was beyond terrified when I got that phone call,” Vanessa admits. “When they told me you’d been in a car crash, I kept imagining you dying and thinking I’d lost you forever. I don’t know exactly when I realised I wanted you back. Maybe Halloween when I saw you so fiercely defensive over Johnny _and_ me. I know by then I’d already seen you put so much thought and effort into caring for us anyway but something just clicked.” Charity feels as though her heart might burst out of her chest at Vanessa’s words.

“I can’t believe you’re telling me we could have been doing this since _October_ ,” Charity whines. And then she tightens her grip around Vanessa’s waist, just a little. She doesn’t want to let her go.

“I kept thinking how stupid it was, the way that guy hated us for being a family and we weren’t even a family then, not really. And then I thought about the way things used to be and I missed it. Missed you,” Vanessa says. “But you’re here now.”

“I am,” Charity agrees, her fingers gently stroking up and down Vanessa’s back almost absent-mindedly. “And I’m not going anywhere. Well, not unless you want me to, anyway,” she adds as an afterthought.

“Don’t you dare, Charity Dingle. I want you to stay. We’ve already lost enough time,” Vanessa insists.

“Let’s stop wasting time talking, then,” she answers and wraps her hand around the back of Vanessa’s neck to pull her in for a kiss.

Being with Vanessa again feels otherworldly and sometimes she wonders whether it’s even real. Every kiss, every time Vanessa tells her openly that she likes her and she’s forgiven her and she’s happy to be with Charity, another little part of Charity knits itself back together. It feels like a form of absolution, Vanessa’s forgiveness and belief in Charity.

_The best part_ , Charity thinks to herself occasionally, _is that she was already happy_. For a long time, she thought she could be a good person with Vanessa and that without her she was worthless. It’s one of the reasons she self-destructed as badly as she did when Vanessa left her.

Since then, after many hours of therapy, she’s learnt she was wrong. Charity managed to turn things around for herself and she fixed things with Debbie and Noah and Sarah _without_ Vanessa and she doesn’t have to rely on Vanessa to feel happy anymore.

Now, the other woman makes everything so much better. Charity feels lighter and she finds herself smiling even just _thinking_ about Vanessa. She’ll be at work making sandwiches and then she’ll remember remember something Vanessa said or did and before she knows it, Marlon is laughing at her for smiling into thin air like an idiot and Charity can’t believe she’s acting like such a lovesick fool when she’s not even sure if Vanessa is her girlfriend.

They don’t get to spend as much time together as they’d like, not with the kids and work and the fact they’re keeping it a secret for now. They both decided it would be best to be able to figure things out themselves before telling anyone else and having to deal with the inevitable questions and expectations it will bring when they found out, but Vanessa has somehow talked Tracy into taking the boys on Valentine’s Day and Noah claims he has plans with friends - Charity isn’t convinced it’s not a date, but he won’t admit to it - and that leaves Charity and Vanessa the house to themselves and Charity can’t wait.

She has a therapy session the morning of Valentine’s Day, followed by a shift at the B&B so she hardly has time to get ready once she gets home. She makes quick work of tidying up and she digs out some candles to create a bit more of a romantic atmosphere. She’s already bought Vanessa a gift: a pair of delicate silver earrings and a matching necklace she’s sure Vanessa will love. On a last minute impulse, she pops to David’s to buy some flowers as well and ignores his inquisitive look.

Vanessa arrives just as Charity is doing the finishing touches on her makeup and she rushes to answer the door. “Hey, come in. You look beautiful,” she says and leans forward to kiss her on the cheek. She’s suddenly nervous, remembering yet again that they haven’t defined what’s going on between them.

“So do you,” Vanessa answers. “I’ve always loved that suit.”

“I know,” Charity replies, winking. It’s always been easy for her to fake confidence and flirtation with Vanessa and it calms her nerves a bit. It feels normal.

“Can I get you a drink? I got a bottle of wine in for you, if you’d like, or I bought some fancy non alcoholic sparkling stuff,” she offers. “Or tea, coffee?”

“Whatever you’re having is fine.”

“Tea, then,” Charity grins. “And I thought we could just call in a takeaway? There’s that new Italian opened in Hotten that’s meant to good but whatever you fancy is fine with me.”

“Italian’s good,” she agrees.

Charity takes the drinks back over to the sofa, passing one to Vanessa and placing her own on the table. She picks up her Valentine’s gift for Vanessa, badly wrapped in silver paper and suddenly doubts herself again.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” she says, holding it out to Vanessa awkwardly. “Sorry, it’s probably too much,” she begins to apologise but Vanessa’s already opening the present and she gasps a little when she opens the box.

“Charity, they’re beautiful. Thank you,” she answers earnestly and quickly takes out her earrings to swap them for the new ones. Then, she hands Charity the necklace. “Put it on me?” she asks and pulls her hair to one side, turning around so Charity can fasten it around her neck.

“Of course,” Charity says, taking the opportunity to run her right hand down Vanessa’s exposed shoulder and enjoy the familiar scent of her perfume.

Vanessa tuns back around and looks apologetically at Charity. “I wasn’t sure what to buy for you. I had a few different ideas but then I kept thinking that what would be really nice would be if we went away for a weekend and I didn’t want to book anything without running it by you first.”

“Whisking me away for a dirty weekend?” she smirks. “Obviously it’s a yes from me.”

Vanessa blushes. “Well, that, but also just to spend time together. And we might have to take the boys with us anyway unless Tracy’s free so that’ll put a dent in anything too dirty, unfortunately.”

“A weekend away with you and our kids still sounds perfect. Book anything you’d like,” Charity saysand then, because she can’t hold back any softness around Vanessa anymore. “I’m so glad we’re here again.”

“Me too. You know, Tracy keeps asking what’s going on between us and I realised we hadn’t really discussed it,” she pauses, looking carefully at Charity. “If it’s what you want too, then I want to be with you Charity, properly. I want us to be together again. I know we can’t just jump right back to where we were but I want to think we can get there.”

There’s a few tears welling up in her eyes and she does her best not to let them fall. Her mascara isn’t waterproof. “Me too,” Charity says. “I want us back together, I want to be able to call you my girlfriend again.” 

There’s a soft hand on her cheek and a thumb wiping away a stray tear. “If you tell anyone I cried then we’re breaking up,” Charity jokes and Vanessa lets out a surprised laugh, then kisses her.

“No discussion of us breaking up, please,” Vanessa responds. “We’re good now, aren’t we? We’re both ready for this.”

Charity nods. “Yeah, yeah we are. I’m going to spend the rest of my life making things up to you.”

“You don’t need to,” Vanessa replies, shaking her head. “I forgave you so long ago, we can’t dwell on it forever and neither of us are the same as we used to be. We have to go forward _together_ now.”

Charity hadn’t planned on saying it, but she can’t stop herself. There’s nothing else that could come close to summing up her feelings in that moment. “I love you. Stupidly. Completely. And I’ll tell you that every day from now on, if you’ll let me. I’m ridiculously in love with you, Vanessa Woodfield.”

Vanessa’s eyes are glistening when she responds. “You can tell me that as often as you like,” she smiles so softly and Charity feels so happy she can’t believe she let herself lose this. “I’m ridiculously in love with you too, Charity.”

They kiss again, gentle and unhurried until Vanessa’s stomach rumbles loudly and they break apart with a laugh. “I guess I’d better feed you, eh? We’ll ring for that Italian,” Charity says.

“Yeah, we should,” Vanessa agrees. “We both need to build up our energy for later,” she adds and smirks as she sees Charity’s eyes darken.

“On the other hand, who needs food really?” she says but Vanessa already has her phone out and is asking her what she wants to order, rolling her eyes and asking for Charity’s favourite pasta dish when she doesn’t get an answer.

“Half an hour,” she grins and Charity pouts. “You grump,” Vanessa teases but she leans over and kisses Charity until she feels her smile into the kiss.

“You love me, though,” Charity states confidently when she pulls away. “And half an hour is enough time for me to do this,” she adds, her lips going straight towards Vanessa’s neck and her hands working quickly to untuck Vanessa’s shirt so she can feel the soft skin of her back and she’s just about to remove her shirt entirely when the door slams open and Noah walks in. The two women spring apart and Charity looks between Noah and Vanessa anxiously.

She doesn’t think he’ll be upset but she isn’t sure how he will take the news. Vanessa’s clearly panicked and Charity moves across so she can take her hand, wanting to give her a bit of reassurance that it’s okay. She glances at Vanessa, asking without speaking whether she’s okay with telling Noah. Not that they can really avoid it now. Vanessa gives her a slight incline of her head and Charity smiles a little, looking towards Noah. “So, uh, me and Vanessa are back together,” she tells him and she swings their hands between them as if to illustrate her point.

“Sorry you had to walk in on us!” Vanessa blurts out and Noah laughs.

“Not like it’s the first time,” he says and Charity relaxes at his casual tone of voice. “Can’t exactly say this is a surprise either.”

“You’re okay with it then?” Charity asks although she has no idea what she’d do if he said no, but she knows that her mistakes in relationships have hurt Noah far too many times already.

“I’m nearly 18, I don’t really care” he says and Charity can hear the lie in his voice. He wouldn’t want to admit to being happy for them. “Just... don’t mess things up again. It isn’t fair to Moses and Johnny.”

“We’re not going to,” Vanessa tells him. “We know where we stand now, we both want this to work.”

“Well, fine then,” he answers. “I just forgot something in my room, I’ll grab it and then I’m heading back out.”

Once he’s out of the room, Charity collapses back onto the sofa and drags Vanessa with her. “That wasn’t too bad,” she smiles. “I think he’s happy for us really. Even if him turning up put a total dent in my plans just then.”

They hear his footsteps on the stairs and Vanessa moves a respectable distance away from Charity. No need for them to embarrass Noah even more for today, she thinks.

“See you tomorrow then, bye mum. Bye Ness.”

“Bye Noah,” they chorus and then Vanessa is tucking herself back under Charity’s right arm.

“That could have been worse. I guess we can tell people we’re back together now,” Vanessa says.

“Or, we could go back to the cellar and traumatise Paddy again!” Charity suggests and Vanessa laughs.

“Can’t deny the idea is tempting,” she agrees, playing with the ends of Charity’s hair. She has to hide her smile at it because Johnny does the exact same thing whenever her hair is within his reach.

The doorbell rings and Vanessa groans. “Do you think we can just shout that the door’s open and let them bring the food in to us?”

“You stay here, I’ll go,” Charity says, kissing her cheek before she gets up and goes to take the food from the delivery guy. She plates it up quickly and takes it through to Vanessa.

“Eat up babe, you’ll need energy for what I have planned for later.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I hope this was worth the wait! Can’t quite believe it took me 40k words before I made them get back together.  
> There’s just an epilogue left now, please leave a comment if you enjoyed this :)


End file.
